Sunday’s Bengals-Chiefs game drew a massive TV audience.
CBS announced that its Sunday afternoon game drew 27.868 million viewers, which made it the most-watched NFL game on CBS in September since 1998. (It’s worth noting that the way out-of-home viewership is counted has changed, so comparing 2024 viewership to 1998 viewership is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.)
Bengals-Chiefs was also the most-watched television broadcast on any network since Super Bowl LVIII in February. Overall, CBS says its NFL games are up 5 percent from last year through the first two weeks of the season.
It’s been a very strong start to the NFL season on the TV viewership front, as Week One also saw even stronger ratings than last year. Whether the NFL can keep those numbers up as the election gets closer and more people turn on news at the expense of sports remains to be seen. But so far the NFL’s dominance of the American TV landscape appears unchallenged.
