There was a narrative floated early this season that the National Football League was having a bad year in terms of its on-field product.
The narrative does have some traction as NFL offenses did not have a particularly great season and the statistics of the many of the Most Valuable Player candidates hasn't stacked up with past winners. Even Tom Brady took a shot at the quality of the present time game despite literally retiring just last season.
Whether or not those criticisms were warranted, it didn't change the fact that this league still has a stronghold on American audiences. And almost as much as it ever has.
The NFL averaged 17.9 million viewers for the 2023 regular season, tied for the second-highest since 1995, or when averages were first tracked, according to a report by the Associated Press. This was just 200,000 viewers less than the high of 18.1 million in 2005.
In the first year of the NFL's 11-year, $110 billion media rights deal, the league saw an 7% increase in viewership over last year. This was driven by the gains in viewership of "Monday Night Football" on ESPN/ESPN2 and ABC as well as "Thursday Night Football" on Amazon Prime Video.
The Walt Disney Company's (DIS) -) ESPN and ABC networks saw 17.36 million viewers, a 29% year-on-year increase, which was driven by the move of more games to the wider-reaching ABC as a result of the Hollywood writers and actors strike.
Amazon saw 11.86 million viewers, significantly lower than any of the other broadcast partners of the NFL, but still a 24% increase over last year. The company views the viewership number as a positive considering it is behind the paywall and only in its second year with the NFL.
Prime Video also had an average viewership age of 48.5, nearly seven years younger than the average NFL viewer on linear television, which should be welcome news for advertisers.
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The nascency of the broadcaster could leave more room for improvement for the streamer — and that should be music to the ears of the NFL.
There were increases in viewership for CBS (19.35 million, +5%) and NBC (21.4 million, +8%) as well, though there was a small dip for Fox (19.42 million, -2%).
Despite the relatively slow season for defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and their star Patrick Mahomes, the loss of Brady, and early injury to Aaron Rodgers, the NFL still found success which the league's executive vice president for media distribution Hans Schroeder credited to a slew of close games and the jockeying for playoff position.
The AP cited that 113 of the 272 NFL regular season games were decided by six points or fewer, which is the second most in the history of the NFL.
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