Final Ratings: Chiefs/Bills Divisional Nail-Biter Draws More Than 50 Million Viewers
Taylor Swift, Jerrod Carmichael, Cara Delevingne and a shirtless Jason Kelce were in good company on Sunday.
The updated tallies trickled in on Tuesday morning, and CBS‘ Sunday-evening broadcast of the NFL Divisional Playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills averaged 50.4 million total viewers, making it the most-watched NFL Divisional Playoff Game ever.
(The previous record was 48.5 million viewers for Cowboys/Packers on Jan. 15, 2017.)
The very close contest, which the Chiefs wound up winning by a score of 27-24, also stands as the most-watched program on any network since last year’s Super Bowl, and Paramount+’s most-streamed live event ever (though no data points on that front are available).
The total Chiefs/Bills audience cited above marks a 10% gain in viewership versus the comparable year-ago match-up between the Cowboys and 49ers, which posted 45.659 million viewers. (San Francisco bested Dallas 19-12.)
Leading out of the Chiefs/Bills game, CBS’ rerun of the Fire Country Season 1 finale (raise your hand if you totally forgot that Bode unknowingly has a baby mama! ✋) retained 7.2 million of those viewers.
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The Live+Same Day numbers reported in our ratings column do not reflect a show’s overall performance, given the increased use of delayed playback via DVR and streaming platforms, plus out-of-home viewing. These numbers (Nielsen fast nationals, unless denoted as finals) instead aim to simply illustrate trends or superlatives. Steve Harvey is not a judge or lawyer and merely offers an alternative forum of dispute resolution.
these are preliminary results. the game will finish closer to 50 million viewers when finals come out.
The NFL’s new Kelce/Swift marketing scheme is working.
Superbowl proposal… Calling it now.
Jason Kelce you are so stupid. Both brothers are just so dumb. The only reason they got “famous” was they were two brothers on opposing teams, and this year is because Travis is with Taylor don’t make me puke swift. It’s sad really how over hyped they are.
Forget the Kelse/Kelse/Swift hype. Neither one of these teams is my favorite, but it was a really exciting game!! I kind of enjoyed KC getting revenge on how badly the Buffalo fans acted.
Swift and Kelce will be dunzo by next season.