The NFL’s dominance over British media consumption was largely negated by the long darkness of another inaugural upheaval, but the 2024 election cycle had comparatively little of an impact on TV ratings. Unlike 2016, when NFL sales fell 8 % in the face of the Trump-Clinton culture, this month’s figures are smooth versus the intoxicating year-ago participation of 17.8 million people per game. Sports this year fought off a televised assassination attempt, the rapid removal of the sitting president from the ballots, and the general weariness that comes with an 8 % decline in overall U.S. TV use. This is consistent sport, even though some of the NFL’s consistency can be attributed to a marked increase in streaming consumption. If politicians failed to alter the Way Things Are, the conflict over the national election did a lot to overwrite the content of this year’s Best 100″ Broadcasts” list. The fear estimates are it that, in terms of classification, I’ll be damned if I understand how to relate to the Amazon Prime and Netflix entries. The 2024 games were a little diminished by the Beltway intrigue, whereas last year’s chart was a testament to the NFL’s unwavering need to squander every opportunity in its path ( Roger Goodell and the boys accounted for 93 of the 100 slots ). This time around, the NFL has bragging rights to 72 of the 100 most-watched events, well ahead of the 66 slots the league claimed eight years ago, when it also had to contend with the Summer Olympics.
In fact, the most recent tally is strikingly comparable to the results from four years ago, when the NFL purchased 71 of the biggest draws during the election/plague year. The league was joined in 2024 by even more competing sports properties, including four college football games, two nights of Paris Olympics action, the women’s NCAA hoops final and Game 5 of the World Series, sports snatched 80 of the 100 available entries. In 2020, sporting events popped up on the list 74 times, down from 88 the previous year ( when the NFL grabbed 73 slots ) and 89 in 2018. In that year, the NFL claimed a modest 61 broadcasts. The list provides additional evidence that the AFC and NFC power struggle is as balanced as it has been in years for the NFL games that made the cut in 2024. The NFC has begun ceding ground after running roughshod over the junior division for the better part of the last 20 years, accounting for 28 of the year’s most-watched broadcasts in comparison to the AFC’s 23. ( Not all that long ago, the NFC enjoyed a 15-slot advantage. ) As cross-flexing becomes more commonplace, interconference meetings have flourished, year-to-date, AFC vs. NFC broadcasts have filled 21 of the 100 top slots. Naturally, the biggest draw among these was Super Bowl LVIII. The Kansas City Chiefs and the Dallas Cowboys each have made 13 appearances, while Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens have edging the Buffalo Bills by one point with their top billing. The aforementioned Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, and Josh Allen’s evolving rivalries have contributed to some of the biggest draws on the chart, with the Chiefs-Ravens AFC Championship Game scaring up 55.5 million viewers, and the AFC Divisional Playoff between KC and Buffalo delivering 50.4 million viewers. Nothing to be taken away from the NFC, which still receives a significant boost from Green Bay and San Francisco ( 10 appearances each ), while the Eagles are no slouch with seven top TV stopovers. The NFC’s ratings prowess are in part a function of its geographic distribution, which includes the split between the New York and Los Angeles DMAs, where the conference has teams that are in each of the top five and eight of the top ten. If it’s widely accepted that TV is now merely a means of distributing commercials for the NFL and to pressure you to switch over to an insurance company, the numbers from last year suggest that at least some of the other Big Four members can still draw audiences under the right circumstances. The Yankees and Dodgers were featured in Fox’s coverage of the 2024 World Series, which was MLB’s first top 100 slot since 2019 and benefited from a combination of market might and star power. ( Game 4 was merely denied a berth, finishing two spots south of the also-denied Kentucky Derby at No. 104 .) On the other hand, the absence of LeBron James and Steph Curry during the NBA Finals cramped ABC’s style, as the league’s biggest draw ( Game 2 of the Mavs-Celtics series ) landed at No. 153. The NBA last made the list in 2019, when the final two of the Raptors-Warriors title tilt featured a high-50s team. Highlights include South Carolina’s 87-75 victory over Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes in the women’s national championship game, which also happened to be the only college basketball team to enter 2024. The closest the men’s tourney got to crashing the list was care of NC State’s ouster of perennial ratings draw Duke in the Elite Eight, per Nielsen, CBS ‘ coverage of the Blue Devils ‘ defeat was the year’s 120th most-watched sporting event. Outside of the usual non-sports outliers—the 98th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was the only non-football/non-politics contender to command a seat among the top 50—the 2024 list was marked by the conspicuous absence of regularly scheduled entertainment programming. While its regular Sunday night broadcasts won’t always partake with the afternoon NFL showcase, the drama has held onto a significant portion of its initial sampling. The Super Bowl lead-out slot made some noise during the series premiere of CBS ‘ Tracker. Through the first eight episodes of Season 2, Tracker is TV’s most-watched and highest-rated scripted show, averaging 8.2 million live-plus-same-day viewers per week, of whom 716, 041 are members of the 18-49 demo. By way of comparison, the average episode of primetime entertainment programming on ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox serves up just 3.6 million viewers, a tally that includes 473, 064 adults under 50. Barring any unforeseen spasms of craziness, the NFL’s dominance over the field should reassert itself in next year’s chart. Football will once again attempt to divert our attention from whatever the government decides to do in 2025 as America steers the rickety tricycle of its fading dominion toward the boundless horizon of partisan derangement and endless griping. The dispersal of cyclical election intrigue should go a long way toward making this coming year’s list look much more like the chart we published 12 months ago, though there is no guarantee we’ll see a repeat performance of the NFL’s monocle-popping 2023 run. If you’re a fan of the never-ending political process ( sicko ), the next general Election Day is 1, 404 days from now —and you can cast your midterm votes in just 669 days. In the meantime, there’s an awful lot of football to watch. ( The headline in this post has been corrected to indicate the NFL had 72 of the most-watched broadcasts, not 73 .)