• by Wayne Friedman , October 24, 2025

Through seven weeks of the NFL regular season, TV advertising revenue across seven networks and platforms has climbed 7% to a collective $1.46 billion versus the same period a year ago, according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage.

Average viewership for these games is now 2.4% higher to 18.5 million viewers on broadcast/cable/streaming platforms versus a year ago, according to Nielsen’s Big Data+ Panel measurement. Nielsen has been using this more extensive national TV measurement system since September.

NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” is averaging 24.0 million viewers. This includes the special seasonal opener, “NFL Kickoff,” which had 28.3 million viewers.

Fox is averaging 21.3 million across all its late and early afternoon games to date through October 19, followed by CBS at 19.3 million viewers, ABC/ESPN at 16.8 million (through October 20) and Amazon Prime Video at 15.5 million. The NFL Network (for three games) is at 6.5 million.

Nielsen’s Big Data+ Panel includes millions of smart TV set ACR data (automated content recognition) from TV set manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, and Vizio and digital/streaming platforms, as well as set-top box data from cable and satellite pay TV providers such as DirecTV and Dish Network.

All this new data is merged into Nielsen’s long-time 40,000 plus-panel TV homes.

Analysts say some of the initial viewership increases with NFL programming -- starting in September -- are the result of this new Nielsen measurement system that tends to offer somewhat higher levels of viewership.