The NFL’s 2026 Wednesday opener ended up being a bit of a disappointment, both in terms of quality of play and viewership.
Wednesday’s New England Patriots-Seattle Seahawks opener averaged 25.1 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. That is the worst audience for an opener since 2022 and down 12% from the Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game on Thursday, which opened the 2025 season (28.3 million).
Viewership peaked at 27.4 million viewers from 9-9:15 p.m. ET. On Telemundo, the game averaged an additional 423,000 viewers.
It wasn’t all bad for the NFL. Among viewers 18-49, this was the best kickoff audience in five years. It was also the fourth consecutive NFL kickoff game to average over 25 million viewers, the longest such streak since 2013-2016. That was followed by a stretch from 2017 to 2020 in which no games averaged over 25 million viewers.
From 2023 to 2025, the NFL made a concerted effort to make the NFL Kickoff game as appealing to viewers as possible. The game featured the Chiefs in 2023 and 2024, and the Cowboys in 2025. A Super Bowl rematch should feature strong viewership, but neither the Patriots nor the Seahawks match the Chiefs and Cowboys in terms of draw.
The NFL continues to dominate the rest of television, to be clear, especially sports. Only Game 7 of the 2025 Major League Baseball World Series averaged more viewers than Patriots-Seahawks (26.88 million), while no game of the five-game 2026 NBA Finals did.
While the NFL remains king, that doesn’t guarantee year-over-year increases. At a certain point, even the NFL isn’t immune to the occasional ratings decline.
Before the season, the NFL telegraphed that it was upset with changes Nielsen made to its viewership methodology, which it argued were rushed and would “make measurement for the upcoming season muddled.” Without direct year-over-year comparisons with the new methodology, it is hard to say if the NFL’s criticism is true. Though it’s worth noting that in Week 1 of the college football season, only one game (Wisconsin-Notre Dame) averaged over 6 million viewers, compared to five last year.
So this blip might be meaningless for the NFL, especially as it continues to dominate sports viewership, but it is a rare sight in recent years to see the NFL unable to tout strong year-over-year ratings.
About Manny Soloway
Manny Soloway is a Iowa based writer focusing on TV ratings. He is also the founder of the TV Media Blog substack.