NFL Regular-Season Ad Revenue 9% Lower, Viewing Slips 2%

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.

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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.

3 comments about "NFL Regular-Season Ad Revenue 9% Lower, Viewing Slips 2%".
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  1. Dan Ciccone from STACKED Entertainment, January 17, 2025 at 11:19 a.m.

    it will be interesting to see what happens to domestic audience viewing over the next few years. Lots of complaints from fans, including me, that it is just becoming much too difficult to watch the games we want to watch. Needing several different streaming platforms plus cable plus linear is bonkers for even die-hard fans to follow - let alone dish out all that extra money. 

  2. Ben B from Retired replied, January 18, 2025 at 12:52 a.m.

    It isn't hard to watch the games or difficult either the only Lions game I didn't watch live was when it was on Prime Video I watched it on NFL Network late at night since I'm a night owl.

  3. Ben B from Retired, January 18, 2025 at 12:58 a.m.

    The Lions were the number 1 team in the ratings this year for the NFL. Whch is always the Cowboys even know they aren't very good this year. NFL will be just fine and still have the ratings no matter what only way the NFL would panic would be under 10 million for national games in my opinion.

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