NBC sees a 37% drop in the overnights for Sunday night’s KC-Denver OT game

Well, maybe that primetime NFL ratings downward spiral isn’t over after all. Sunday night’s Kansas City-Denver game which ended in overtime did not bring the viewers compared to last year. Chiefs-Broncos received an 11.8/20 overnight rating/share. And while that won the night for NBC, it still was lower than last year’s Patriots-Broncos overtime game in Week 12 that drew big numbers. In fact, it was a whopping 37% lower than New England-Denver’s 16.2/26 in 2015.

KC-Denver was flexed into last night’s slot over the New England Patriots-New York Jets game originally scheduled there. And without the Patriots, you can see that the ratings suffered. All this despite the fact that Chiefs-Broncos was close throughout the game and went through a full overtime period.

After seeing two consecutive weeks of ratings increases on Sunday Night Football, NBC has had ratings drops for its traditional Thanksgiving Night and now this past Sunday’s game.

While NBC can still point to Sunday Night Football still beating the competition in most weeks, it still suffers from having lower ratings from last year.

According to Sports TV Ratings, these are the top-rated markets for Kansas City-Denver:

Denver 45.9/68
Kansas City 41.0/60
Albuquerque 20.8/32
Vegas 17.1/27
Sacramento 16.4/26
San Diego 16.0/26
Richmond 15.5/24
New Orleans 15.2/22
Salt Lake 14.8/26
Norfolk 14.3/24

Next Sunday’s game between Carolina and Seattle may have looked compelling at the beginning of the season, but with the Panthers mired in last place in the NFC South, it doesn’t look as good as it once did. However, with Cam Newton and Russell Wilson expected to play, perhaps NBC’s numbers won’t drop as much as they did this week.

[Sports TV Ratings]