• by Wayne Friedman , 4 hours ago

With additional games added to its roster, the first week of the new NFL season posted a 13% drop in overall average viewership per game to 19.5 million, according to Nielsen, versus a year ago.

Still, that average was higher than the NFL’s overall regular-season average for 2025, which came in at 18.7 million.

The opening week of t he 2025 season averaged 22.3 million viewers.

The league’s extra two games in the first week (eight games versus six) added more gross ratings points for sports-seeking advertisers, including an added Netflix game in Australia on Thursday night.

The game scored 18.5 million viewers, with the San Francisco 49ers beating the Los Angeles Rams 27-7.

The NFL moved up its NFL Kickoff start on NBC (and Peacock) to Wednesday (from Thursday), with last year’s Super Bowl contenders. The Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots 13-10 in a game that pulled in 25.1 million viewers.

But NBC’s big “Sunday Night Football” game a couple of days later earned the best results for Week One, at 25.7 million. It featured two major NFL team brand names: The New York Giants winning over the Dallas Cowboys, 28-20.

But there was some overload -- especially for Sunday afternoon on Fox (and Fox One) and CBS (and Paramount+).

Two early-afternoon game windows at 1 p.m. ET games -- four regional games for each network -- posted an average of 10.8 million and 14.1 million respectively.

Early-afternoon games typically see lower viewing numbers. A year ago, there was just one on CBS which had 17.1 million viewers.

Without those two early windows, the NFL had a slight 2% increase overall for the week to 21.9 million viewers.

ABC/ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” (on ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and NFL+) pulled in a massive 23.2 million, the third-most-watched “MNF” on ESPN since 2006.