If there’s Chiefs fatigue, it didn’t make people turn the channel.
Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the game between the Bills and the Chiefs generated an average audience of 57.4 million. That’s a record for the AFC Championship and the most for any conference championship game since Giants-49ers had an audience of 57.6 million in 2012.
The Bills-Chiefs game landed in the late window, which drew 56.7 million for Lions-49ers a year ago.
The bad news is that the audience for Commanders-Eagles in the early game was way down. Last year, Chiefs-Ravens racked up 55.4 million. This year, the NFC Championship did 44.2 million. It’s a drop of 13.2 million.
Slapping the two games together, the average audience on Sunday was 50.8 million. Last year, it was 56 million.
Other factors that we’ll explain in a later post have contributed to the numbers, and the ratings most likely will increase next year. For now, though, the NFL’s playoff games are in a downward trend for each round in comparison to last year.
