Despite a hotly contested MVP race, this year’s NFL Honors did not perform well from a viewership perspective.
Thursday’s NFL Honors, which was highlighted by Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen winning the league’s Most Valuable Player award, drew just 2.3 million viewers across Fox and NFL Network.
That’s down 20% from last year’s award ceremony, when Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson won MVP (2.9 million viewers). It’s also down 11% from the previous record low during the pandemic-impacted NFL Honors in 2021 (2.6 million viewers).
According to data from Programming Insider, the NFL Honors lost head-to-head with its primetime competition on NBC (The Hunting Party and Law & Order: SVU) and CBS (George & Mandy’s First Marriage, Ghosts, Matlock, Elsbeth), but beat out ABC’s programming (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Scamanda, Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini).
The award show did beat out other sports competitions on cable, including a Dallas Mavericks-Boston Celtics game on TNT (1.81 million viewers) and a women’s college basketball on ESPN featuring Tennessee and UConn (831,000 viewers).
Per Karp, the NFL Network’s pre-show programming that featured red carpet coverage drew 319,000 viewers, up 2% versus red carpet coverage last year.
This year’s show was plagued with errors, including one instance where the on-screen graphic misidentified the Defensive Player of the Year and another instance where Justin Jefferson’s speech was interrupted due to a teleprompter malfunction.
Clearly, the incessant talk from those in the media over who deserved to be this year’s MVP didn’t resonate with viewers. And given the suspect voting of some voters, it’s easy to imagine the legitimacy of these awards coming into question in the minds of fans.
None of that bodes well for the future of the NFL Honors as a television product. But at the end of the day, the awards show is small potatoes for the television behemoth that is the NFL.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.