{"id":895654,"date":"2026-09-17T19:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895654\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T19:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:18:10","slug":"nfls-week-1-total-audience-drops-by-13-percent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895654\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL&#8217;s Week 1 total audience drops by 13 percent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NFL is back. Not everyone got the memo.<\/p>\n<p>Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the Week 1 games <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/09\/17\/nfls-week-1-audience-down-13-even-as-espn-scores-best-start-to-mnf\/?issueId=R7KYL4JF4BGSJGKWX6F5NRLHFU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">averaged 19.5 million viewers<\/a>. That\u2019s a 13-percent drop from 22.3 million in Week 1 of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also down from 2024, when Week 1 averaged 21.5 million.<\/p>\n<p>This year, Fox and CBS had competing national windows, at 4:25 p.m. ET. In <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/frontofficesports.com\/article\/networks-get-mixed-results-with-week-1-nfl-viewership\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">the second half<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, a sport that seeks to always grow can\u2019t be happy that, for the first week of the season, the audience took a step in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL is back. Not everyone got the memo. Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the Week&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-895654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}