The NFL season officially kicks off Thursday, September 4, with the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles taking on their division rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, on Thursday Night Football.
Fans can watch the game on NBC, and if recent history is any indication, tens of millions will tune in.
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Last season, 28.9 million viewers watched the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Baltimore Ravens. It was the most-watched NFL kickoff game since the league started showcasing the opening matchup in 2002.
The previous record was 27.6 million in 2015, according to ESPN. However, that game didn’t have the added streaming viewers because Nielsen, the company that measures television viewership, didn’t start measuring that information until 2016.
Image source: Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images
Streaming has become the new broadcast television
Today, streaming TV accounts for just over 47% of all ad-supported TV viewership, while broadcast and cable combined make up about 40%.
However, advertisers are still paying top dollar for broadcast spots as traditional television still accounted for 56% of ad-supported viewing, despite representing only 44% of viewership, according to Ad Exchanger.
Nielsen has been trying to evolve with the times.
Last November, the Media Rating Council, the oversight group that applies standards for audience measurement, approved Nielsen’s inclusion of streaming service data in its TV ratings measurements.
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It’s a move the NFL has been pushing for years, immediately benefiting its product.
Last season, the streaming plus data from Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime showed an 8% increase of just under 1 million viewers over a five-week period when the streaming data was added in.
The NFL is unhappy with the way streaming viewership is measured
With the NFL 2025 kickoff just days away, the league doesn’t seem very happy with the accuracy of Nielsen’s ratings.
Nielsen is underestimating the audience for league games, as “there are millions of viewers that we believe they are systematically undercounting, NFL Chief Data and Analytics officer Paul Bellew told the Wall Street Journal.
The NFL says it is concerned enough to begin experimenting with “alternatives to Nielsen” for additional data.
A Nielsen spokesperson responded that the agency is “confident this will be the most accurately rated football season in history,” while adding that the company is working closely with the league to “innovate its data collection.”
The NFL has fully embraced streaming in recent years, following up its Amazon Prime deal with a new deal with Netflix.
Ballew serves on Nielsen’s quality advisory board, so he knows some of the company’s advances in streaming reporting. However, he also says the company’s new Big Data panel doesn’t yet include first-party audience data from most of the streaming services that carry NFL games.
The NFL money-making machine warms up from another big year
The NFL does not make money from advertising.
It sells its broadcast rights to its partners at NBC, ESPN, FOX, Amazon, and Netflix, and those networks sell advertising to make money.
So, the NFL’s advocacy for the streaming numbers benefits its partners, who stand to make more money from the higher rates that more viewership brings.
But the league is also setting up the next round of negotiations, which could happen as soon as 2029.
The NFL’s impact on ad revenue is palpable.
Netflix, which only introduced advertising in recent years, saw a 150% increase in upfront ad sales in Q3 2024, thanks to its Christmas Day NFL games.
Meanwhile, broadcasters already know how valuable the league is.
In 2023, the NFL owned 93 of the 100 most-watched broadcasts.
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