The Kansas City Chiefs’ 21-14 win over the Miami Dolphins from Frankfurt, Germany on Sunday morning was the most interesting game of the NFL’s Week 9 slate, and it drew viewership worthy of that designation.
Per Sports Media Watch, an audience of 9.18 million watched the game, which kicked off at 9:30 a.m. ET on NFL Network. While that’s a small number compared to the NFL’s Sunday afternoon and primetime windows on CBS, Fox, and NBC, it’s a huge number for both NFL Network and a morning game.
In fact, the game ranks as the NFL’s most-watched morning game since 2015 (and the most-watched morning game ever on NFL Network), when a Week 4 Jets-Dolphins game from London averaged just shy of ten million viewers.
Unsurprisingly, the game was a massive hit in the Kansas City market. With the game starting at 8:30 a.m. local time, it drew a 94 share in the market, meaning 94% of all TVs turned on at the time had the game on. That’s a startling number and shows the pull of the Chiefs locally. I guess there wasn’t much interest in Aston Villa vs Nottingham Forest on USA Network.
The NFL has just one international game left on its schedule. In Week 10, the Colts take on the Patriots in Frankfurt with a 9:30 a.m. ET kickoff, airing on NFL Network. Given that both the Colts and Patriots are under .500 and out of the playoff picture, it would be quite surprising if that game came close to matching the strong viewership of Chiefs-Dolphins.
