NFL conference championships draw a combined 99 million viewers, up 8 per cent

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.