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Two weeks of the 2024 National Football League season are almost in the books with soaring interest from fans around the world, which could benefit media companies that have NFL rights.
What Happened: Viewership figures are in for the first week of the NFL season along with the first "Thursday Night Football" game from Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) streaming platform Prime Video, which kicked off the second week.
The first week saw NFL games average 21 million viewers, setting the highest opening-week average on record for the league.
Among the media companies that benefitted from the opening week of the NFL season were Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA)(NASDAQ:PARAA), Fox Corporation (NASDAQ:FOX)(NASDAQ:FOXA) and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS).
Comcast had three prime-time games during the first week with the opening game on Sept. 5, a Peacock streaming exclusive on Sept. 6 and the opening weekend's Sunday Night Football game. Viewership for the opening kickoff game was 29.2 million, up 9% to last year's kickoff game, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
The Friday night Peacock exclusive game had an average of 14 million viewers. The opening Sunday Night Football game was watched by an average of 22.8 million people across NBC and Peacock.
Disney saw 20.5 million viewers for the first Monday Night Football game of the season across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and streaming platforms.
CBS and Fox also saw strong viewership for the Sunday afternoon games with Fox averaging an impressive 23.9 million viewers for the late Sunday afternoon national game between the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns, which was Tom Brady's Fox broadcast debut for broadcasting.
The second week of the NFL season kicked off with a ban with Amazon's first 2024 game seeing an average of 14.96 million viewers. The figure was the third largest Thursday Night Football game for Amazon ever and significantly ahead of the company's 2023 season average viewership of 11.8 million viewers.
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Why It's Important: Media companies continue to shell out millions of dollars for national sports rights, especially the NFL.
The strong opening week viewership show exactly why, as having the rights to key NFL games can help with advertising revenue and also boost streaming subscribers.
In 2023, 93 of the top 100 most watched shows were NFL games, according to data from Nielsen. A report from Variety showed that 45 of the top 100 most watched primetime broadcasts in 2023 were NFL games.
While Disney, Fox and Paramount have benefitted from NFL rights for many years, Comcast could be one of the biggest beneficiaries for the 2024 season with the extra primetime game in the first week and the potential boost to its Peacock streaming platform.
Amazon signed a big streaming-only deal with the NFL that has benefitted the company with additional branding boost for Prime Video and also led to more sign-ups for the streaming platform.
The streaming company's NFL deal also led to other streaming companies ready to commit more to live sports rights, including rival streaming platform Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX).
After years of focusing on what it calls sports adjacent programming of sports docuseries and specials, Netflix is now investing more in live sports content. The streaming giant will air its first NFL games in the 2024 season with two highly anticipated Christmas day matchups.
Netflix will stream the Kansas City Chiefs at Pittsburgh Steelers at 1 p.m. ET and the Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans at 4:30 p.m. ET on Christmas Day. The games could provide a boost to Netflix's subscriber count, particularly its ad-supported plan which has been a large company focus.
For the NFL, media partners mean big dollars. For media partners, the NFL means big viewership and advertising money. A potential win-win for all parties involved.
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