The NFL ratings behemoth continues to roll on, with an estimated 99 million combined viewers announced Monday afternoon for the league’s conference championship games Sunday. The 17th and possibly-final Brady-Manning matchup in the AFC title game was the main part of that, as the strong overnights suggested, but even the lesser performance from the Panthers-Cardinals NFC title game still led to overall gains:
.@NFL Conference Championship Games post dominant viewership numbers: https://t.co/BqgH3CPeNr pic.twitter.com/Pitydc4zhN
— NFL345 (@NFL345) January 25, 2016
The winter weather affecting much of the eastern U.S. may have helped boost the ratings, but so did the Manning-Brady hypefest, as well as that game being close right until the end. (And apparently viewers weren’t turned off by poor offensive play on both sides; a contested game seems to be more important.) The 53.3 million viewers there are the second-most ever for an AFC title game, behind only January 2011’s Jets-Steelers (54.8 million). The Carolina-Arizona game was much more of a blowout, which hurt its cause, but it was still a significant rise over last year’s lopsided late game (Colts-Patriots, which had an AFC six-year low of 42.1 million viewers). So, that’s a good sign for the upcoming Super Bowl. No pressure on it, though; it only has to beat 114.4 million viewers, the most in U.S. TV history.
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