Thursday’s Hall of Fame Game between the Detroit Lions and the Los Angeles Chargers on NBC marked the unofficial start of the 2025 NFL season. And if this game serves as any indication for things to come for NBC’s NFL coverage in 2025, the network could be in for a big year.
Despite the fact that the game itself was largely one-sided in favor of the Chargers, interest in the game was very clearly there. According to Douglas Pucci, a Nielsen TV ratings reporter for Programming Insider, an average of 6.21 million viewers tuned in to the 2025 Hall of Fame Game.
This marks the highest viewership for the preseason opener since the 2021 edition of the game. That matchup, which was broadcast by Fox, was between two staple franchises in the NFL, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys and averaged 7.33 million viewers.
🏈📺📊 Thursday #TVRatings: Lions-Chargers on NBC is Most-Watched NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame Game in Four Years https://t.co/mxgLEU748d via @PIUpdate
— Douglas Pucci (@SonOfTheBronx) August 2, 2025
Last season’s Hall of Fame Game on ESPN between the Chicago Bears and the Houston Texans was famously suspended midway through due to inclement weather. So it should perhaps be no surprise that this year’s game eclipsed the 5.2 million that tuned into that game. But this year’s game was also a four-percent increase over the Jets-Browns edition in 2023, which brought in 5.98 million viewers.
The success from the viewership perspective of the Hall of Fame Game isn’t any foolproof indicator that NBC is bound to continue to increase its average viewership for their Sunday Night Football product in 2025 as they did in 2024. But it is at the very least a positive start to the network’s coverage of the NFL in 2025.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.