The NFL is back. Not everyone got the memo.
Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the Week 1 games averaged 19.5 million viewers. That’s a 13-percent drop from 22.3 million in Week 1 of the 2025 season.
It’s also down from 2024, when Week 1 averaged 21.5 million.
This year, Fox and CBS had competing national windows, at 4:25 p.m. ET. In the second half of the double-doubleheader, Packers-Vikings attracted 18.6 million to CBS, with 20.3 million watching Commanders-Eagles on Fox, via Eric Fisher of Front Office Sports.
The extra window, and the ensuing dilution of the competing CBS and Fox audiences, surely pulled down the per-game average from 2025, when Fox televised Lions-Packers in Week 1.
Regardless, a sport that seeks to always grow can’t be happy that, for the first week of the season, the audience took a step in the wrong direction.
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