AFC Championship Breaks Audience Record With Another Chiefs Win As NFC Title Game Sees Sharp Decline

A Super Bowl rematch between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles is around the corner after this weekend’s conference title games — one of which set an audience record while the other underperformed fairly significantly.

Nearly 58M people tuned in to CBS to watch the Kansas City Chiefs best the Buffalo Bills, setting a record as the most-watched AFC Championship matchup on record.

That’s up 2M from last year’s AFC title game, which at the time was a record-setting audience. It’s also a slight lift from last year’s NFC Championship that aired in the later time period, which is worth noting since the late games do tend to perform better overall.

Speaking of, this year’s NFC Championship saw a sharp decrease in viewership this year, attracting 44.2M on Fox for the Eagles’ win over the Washington Commanders.

As mentioned, a slight decrease might have been expected, since the matchup aired in the earlier time slot this year, but this marks the NFC title game’s worst audience since 2018 (Rams vs. Saints).

However, that decline for the NFC title game is actually more reflective of the state of NFL viewership this year than the AFC’s new record is. After scoring its best regular season audience in years last season, the league saw a pretty sharp audience decline across the board for the regular season as well as the playoffs this year.

It’s hard to say how that might impact the ratings for the Super Bowl, considering that telecast generally attracts a massive audience regardless of specific circumstances. Last year, the Super Bowl once again broke TV viewing records as the most-watched Super Bowl ever and the second most-watched telecast on record.