• by Wayne Friedman , January 17, 2025

The NFL’s national advertising TV revenue was down 9% to $3.86 billion for the 2024 regular season, according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage.

This was partly attributable to fewer ABC “Monday Night Football” games versus 2023.

ABC ran many more “MNF” games exclusively or simulcast with ESPN in the previous season to fill the prime-time programming gaps caused by the writers'/actors' strike.

This also had an effect on the average viewership per game, which slipped 2% to an average 17.5 million Nielsen-measured viewers.

Total impressions for NFL regular-season viewing were down 10% to 171.5 billion, with ad airings 9% lower to 9,857, according to EDO.

EDO results include data from Fox, CBS, NBC, Prime Video, ABC, ESPN and NFL Network. But they do not include two Netflix Christmas Day games, which averaged 26.5 million Nielsen-measured viewers.

NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” was the leading NFL franchise in terms of advertising revenue -- up 5% to $995.7 million.

Fox’s Sunday afternoon games were down 12% to $773.3 million. CBS was down 17% to $752.2 million, while Prime Video slipped 5% to $681.2 million and ESPN, lost 4% to $219.8 million.

ABC’s revenue fell sharply -- 28% to $351.1 million. Advertising airings at ABC were down 31% to 785.

For the 2024 season ABC had seven games, four simulcasts with ESPN, and three exclusive games.

The previous year, due to writers'/actors' strikes, ABC aired 19 regular-season games -- 15 regular-season simulcasts and four exclusive games, as well as two post-season simulcasts. For ABC, this was the most “MNF” games since 2005 when ABC had the franchise exclusively, the last year of its long 35-year reign as the exclusive rights holder of “MNF.”

Nielsen measurement of those three of NFL’s biggest TV franchises showed relatively stable results. NBCUniversal’s “Sunday Night Football” inched up 1% to 21.6 million, which includes measurements from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics under NBCU’s Total Audience Delivery (TAD), which includes airings on streamer Peacock.

Sunday afternoon networks CBS and Fox both slipped a bit, with CBS down 1% to 19.2 million and Fox giving up 3% to 18.4 million.

Amazon was up 11% to 13.2 million for its “Thursday Night Football” -- higher than in its second year for “TNF”, 11.7 million. ESPN was down 14% to 15 million for “Monday Night Football” -- much of this due to lower spillover effect from fewer simulcast games with ABC.