Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes rolls out and looks downfield.

The Chiefs and Bills played one of the most entertaining games in any sport in a long time last night, with Kansas City pulling out the overtime win to advance to the AFC Championship.

The evening game on CBS will almost assuredly pull down a big national number from a ratings perspective, but we already have Kansas City market data, and it’s probably about what you were expecting. (As long as you were expecting “many people watched.”)

Via SBJ’s John Ourand:

This, of course, shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Chiefs are very popular in Kansas City. They’ve also been really good for years now, it was a weekend primetime game, and it was against a marquee opponent. (Congratulations to the Bills on being a marquee opponent!) Plus the game itself lived up to the hype, almost from the start.

In the end, the bigger story would have been if the ratings and share in the local market wasn’t a massive one. Especially given the teams involved; KC and Buffalo have some of the strongest local ratings out there, too.

Buffalo’s numbers will also be big. Again, this is news, technically, in the sense it is new information relevant to sports media, but it is not a surprise at all. Something possibly surprising: the runner-up in Kansas City during the peak of the game, which was PBS.

Strong counterprogramming!

About Jay Rigdon

Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.