Sundays Are (Empirically) for Football
The NFL being the biggest driver of TV viewing for broadcast networks is nothing new. The league continued fueling broadcasters to a third straight month of growth in October. Along with its monthly Gauge snapshot, though, Nielsen also released some data showing just how big a difference the NFL can make both for networks and…
The NFL being the biggest driver of TV viewing for broadcast networks is nothing new. The league continued fueling broadcasters to a third straight month of growth in October.
Along with its monthly Gauge snapshot, though, Nielsen also released some data showing just how big a difference the NFL can make both for networks and the streaming services that regularly carry games.
On Mondays through Saturdays in the October reporting period (which ran from Sept. 29-Oct. 26), broadcast nets averaged 22 percent of all TV viewing in the United States. On Sundays, with nine or more hours of NFL telecasts on CBS, Fox and NBC, that share jumped to 27.3 percent. Viewing shares on other platforms, meanwhile, fell by 2.7 points (cable) and 1.3 points (streaming) on Sundays compared to the other six days of the week.
The NFL’s dominance also shows up on streamers that regularly carry games. Peacock, which simulcasts NBC’s Sunday Night Football, jumped to 2 percent of all viewing on Sundays in October. vs. 1.5 percent the rest of the week. Paramount+, which carries CBS’ games, went from 1.2 percent from Monday to Saturday to 1.6 percent on Sundays. Amazon’s Prime Video, home to Thursday Night Football, averaged 3.8 percent of all viewing for October —but 6.4 percent on Thursdays.
After a relatively soft September, streaming ticked up some in October and commanded 45.7 percent of TV use. Broadcast had 22.9 percent of viewing — its highest total of 2025 so far —and cable dipped a little to 22.2 percent. In addition to the NFL, the premieres of a number of broadcast dramas, including CBS’ Tracker and NBC’s Chicago shows, helped bring broadcasters’ share of viewing up.
YouTube remained the biggest individual streaming service with 12.9 percent of all viewing in October, up from 12.6 percent in September. Disney (4.8 percent), Paramount (2.1 percent) and Peacock (1.6 percent also improved some over the previous month.
Nielsen’s Gauge figures for October are below.
