Coming into Thursday’s season-opening game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens, there was naturally a ton of buzz given the multitude of storylines. And when you pair that with a highly entertaining game on the field, NBC had themselves an extremely successful night in terms of ratings.
According to an NBC press release, Thursday’s game brought in an average of 28.9 million viewers, peaking at 33 million viewers in the second quarter of the matchup.
This not only tops last year’s NFL Kickoff season opener between the Chiefs and the Detroit Lions, which averaged 27.5 million viewers, but it also now ranks as the highest-viewed NFL Kickoff game ever.
Peacock, NBC’s streaming service that is set to be a key fixture in their NFL coverage again this season, also had extremely impressive numbers from a viewership perspective, with an average of 4.6 million viewers tuning in on the platform.
This represents a 65% increase on the platform from last year’s season opener, also ranking as the second most-streamed NBC NFL game ever behind only Super Bowl LVI in 2022.
This perhaps shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise considering this game was not only the start of the NFL season, which has historically done well from a ratings perspective. But it is also a rematch of last year’s AFC Championship Game, which was the most-watched AFC Championship Game in NFL history for CBS.
NBC will now have the chance to build on these impressive numbers with another stand-alone game to start the 2024-25 NFL season, with the Philadelphia Eagles taking on the Green Bay Packers on Friday night, which will be a Peacock exclusive matchup.
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.