NBC audience up big for Sunday Night Football opener, down for Thursday season opener

It was a mixed bag for NBC’s first two audiences of the 2022 NFL season.

The Sunday Night Football opener between the Bucs and Cowboys averaged 25.1 million viewers, the best mark for an SNF opener since 2015. Last year’s Bears-Rams tilt pulled in just 18.6 million across NBC and Peacock.

NBC gets 25.1 million viewers for Cowboys-Buccaneers snoozefest. Best Week 1 Sunday night game since 2015 (Cowboys-Giants at 26.9 million) +35% from Bears-Rams in 2021.

Now let's see if a Dak Prescott-less Cowboys continue to be that strong a draw over next 6 weeks.

— Austin Karp (@AustinKarp) September 12, 2022

It was a slightly different story on Thursday. The season opening kickoff game between the Bills and Rams averaged 21.7 million, down from last year’s 26 million for Cowboys-Bucs and 2019’s Packers-Bears, but even with Texans-Chiefs in 2020 and up from Falcons-Eagles in 2018 (which was delayed by weather).

Of note: out of home viewership is included in all games from the 2020 season to the present. It was not included for any games prior to 2020.

In a welcome note, NBC included actual viewership data for Peacock streams!

Last night’s game delivered an AMA of 1.65 million viewers – NBC Sports’ most-streamed Sunday night NFL game on record. Through two games, NBC Sports’ AMA of 1.7 million viewers is up 34% from last year.

Given how tightly companies typically hold streaming data, this is very useful information. 1.65 million of an audience of 25.1 million is roughly 6.5% of the audience. The 1.75 million for the Kickoff game is around 8% of the 21.7 million audience. It’ll be interesting to compare that to other companies who report streaming numbers to determine what the normal range is.

Anyway, we’ll be back tomorrow with the rest of Week 1.

[NBC Sports]