The New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks emerged victorious from the weekend’s NFL conference championships, setting the stage for the two teams to face off yet again for the ring in Super Bowl LX — but it seems audiences weren’t nearly as jazzed about the possibility of this rematch as they were heading into the games that decided last year’s eventual Chiefs-Eagles showdown.
The Seahawks defeated the Los Angeles Rams for the title of NFC Champs with 46M viewers tuning in on Fox. That’s just a minor 4% uptick over last year’s Commanders-Eagles face off. But, when taking into consideration some of Nielsen’s recent measurement adjustments, the difference is likely negligible.
All networks began reporting Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel numbers this TV season, which combines traditional panel measurement with data from cable, satellite set-top boxes and smart TVs spanning some 45 million households and 75 million devices. Per guidance from the company itself, networks are able to compare with last year’s Panel Only numbers — but there is likely to be a blanket 4-6% uptick simply because of the expansion in measured devices. Nielsen also began including out-of-home viewing in its NFL numbers about a year ago, which can naturally increase the viewership stats as well.
All that said, there’s a chance that the viewership is actually down from last year. Based on Panel Only stats, Nielsen reported 44.2M viewers for the Eagles’ win in 2025.
One last note on the Seahawks’ NFC title win: Nielsen says the game peaked with 49.7M viewers from 9:30 to 9:45 p.m. ET, around the end of the game.
The AFC Championship, which saw the Patriots take down the Denver Broncos for the Super Bowl spot, managed a slightly higher average with 48.6M tuning in. CBS touts this as “up 10% from last year’s comparable early game,” though that would’ve been the NFC Championship because the games switched time slots this year.
Anyway, when compared to last year’s Chiefs-Bills game that sent the Kansas City team back to the Super Bowl, this year’s AFC title was down about 15.5%. In fact, it’s the least-watched AFC title game since Bengals-Chiefs in 2022.
Nielsen says that the audience peaked at the game’s conclusion with nearly 58M viewers (which, interestingly enough, is about the average audience for last year’s game). Despite the big year-over-year decline, it’s still the second most-watched game of the season so far after the Chiefs-Cowboys matchup on Thanksgiving Day, which averaged 57M.
CBS’ attempt to compare the AFC title to last year’s 3 p.m. game does point out the disadvantage that those mid-afternoon games can sometimes face when it comes to viewership. However, by all accounts, it’s hard to say the NFC title fared much better despite the fact that it aired in primetime. It was down 20% in viewership from last year’s AFC Championship in primetime.
Whether this bodes poorly for Super Bowl LX remains to be seen. The full postseason is still up 5%, and the NFL has been posting viewership gains all season.
