The second biggest NFL day of the year very much lived up to that moniker on Sunday.
The primetime NFC championship game averaged nearly 57 million viewers for Fox, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen — and will likely surpass that once final ratings are in early Tuesday. The audience peaked at almost 59 million viewers (58.97 million) from 9:15-9:30 p.m. ET, late in the San Francisco 49ers 34-31 victory over the Detroit Lions.
Sunday’s broadcast is on track to be Fox’s biggest NFC title game since 2012, when the New York Giants’ overtime win over the 49ers brought in 57.64 million viewers (with the caveat that out of home ratings weren’t part of Nielsen’s same-day reporting until 2020). The NFC title game improved by about 7 percent on last year’s primetime conference title game (the AFC Championship on CBS, which drew 53.12 million people) and by 19 percent over the 2023 NFC championship (47.5 million), which aired in the afternoon.
Both local markets for the game saw massive tune-in as well. In Detroit, the game had a 46.3 household rating and 79 share, while in San Francisco, it was 30.5/78 — meaning that in both cities, more than three quarters of TV sets were watching the game during its broadcast window.
Preliminary numbers for the AFC Championship on CBS, which saw the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Baltimore Ravens, 17-10, weren’t available at publication time. There’s little reason to think, however, that the broadcast won’t be huge as well: A week earlier, the Chiefs and Buffalo Bills gathered 50.39 million viewers for a divisional playoff game on CBS.
Following the NFC championship and post-game, 7.2 million people watched the season premiere of Next Level Chef on Fox. That’s the biggest same-day audience for an unscripted broadcast series since last year’s Next Level Chef premiere, which followed the Super Bowl.
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