Chiefs’ win over Jets had huge TV ratings and set ‘Sunday Night Football’ record in KC
A joke on social media was repeated frequently on Sunday ahead of when the Chiefs played the Jets: “What time does the Taylor Swift game start?”
Yes, the confluence of the NFL and Taylor Swift continued Sunday and the result was massive television ratings. NBC said its “Sunday Night Football” game, won by the Chiefs and seen by Swift and other big-name celebrities, was the most-watched Sunday program since Super Bowl LVII.
For the Chiefs, it was the second straight season they played a Week 4 game on “Sunday Night Football,” and this year’s ratings were up significantly.
“Based on preliminary data across NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL Digital platforms, the game’s Total Audience Delivery (TAD) average of 27.0 million viewers is up 22% from last year’s Week 4 game (22.2 million as Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs faced Tom Brady and the Buccaneers),” NBC wrote in a news release.
NBC said the game had 1.85 million viewers on its streaming services (including the NFL’s platforms). That was the network’s biggest streaming number for a regular-season Sunday NFL game, NBC said, and an increase of 42% over last year’s Chiefs-Buccaneers game.
A record
NBC said Sunday’s game had an 83 share in Kansas City (that number represents the percentage of homes with televisions in use tuned to the game), the most for a Chiefs game on “Sunday Night Football” since it debuted on NBC in 2006.
Kansas City had a 47.8 rating (percentage of all possible TV households) for the game, which was the highest of any market. St. Louis was second (18.7), followed by Denver (16.3).
Spike in female viewership
The network said Nielsen’s “Fast National figures” showed a massive increase in female viewership. It said the number of girls age 12-17 who watched was up 53% over the average of the first three “Sunday Night Football” games this season.
There also was a 24% increase in women viewers aged 18-24 and a 35% bump in female viewers aged 35 or older.
“The collective growth resulted in an approximate viewership increase of more than two million female viewers,” NBC wrote.
Roku said female viewership increased 20% over the Chiefs’ win against the Bears a week earlier.
