The AFC and NFC Championship Games both drew big audiences on television on Sunday.
The Buccaneers’ win over the Packers in the NFC Championship Game drew 44.77 million viewers on FOX, while the Chiefs’ win over the Bills in the AFC Championship Game drew 41.85 million viewers, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
That’s a viewership increase from last year of 5 percent for the NFC game and 2 percent for the AFC game.
The NFL said the NFC game had an additional 1.6 million streaming viewers, and the AFC game had 1.4 million streaming viewers.
Nothing on American television reaches anything close to the audience of big NFL games. The Academy Awards, typically the most-watched television program in America outside football, drew 24 million viewers last year. The most popular scripted entertainment shows fall short of 20 million viewers.
The Super Bowl typically draws upwards of 100 million viewers.
