NFL's wild-card drama scores huge ratings

The NFL's blockbuster regular season rolled straight into wild-card weekend, and the audiences followed.

Fox opened Saturday with the Rams' 34-31 victory over the Panthers drawing 28 million viewers, up 7% over last year in the same time slot for the biggest Saturday afternoon wild-card audience on any network since 2011, Front Office Sports reported.

Prime Video then shattered streaming records as the Bears' 31-27 win over the Packers averaged 31.6 million, which is Amazon's largest NFL audience by far and the most-watched exclusively streamed game in league history, topping Netflix's late-afternoon Christmas matchup (27.5 million). The figure was 43% higher than last year's streaming wild-card game on Amazon.

Sunday kept the surge going. CBS's early window featuring the Bills' 27-24 win over the Jaguars delivered 32.7 million viewers, the best early Sunday wild-card number on record for any network.

Fox's late game, the 49ers' 23-19 victory over the defending champion Eagles, led the entire weekend at 41 million for Fox's biggest wild-card audience since 2015. It marked a 14% jump over the comparable slot a year ago.

NBC's primetime game, with the Patriots ousting the Chargers 16-3, averaged 28.9 million, narrowly behind last year's comparable game but still the most-watched Sunday night broadcast of any kind since last February's Super Bowl.

ESPN's numbers for the Texans' 30-6 win over the Steelers on Monday night will arrive on Wednesday.

The early playoff spike aligns with the league's regular-season average of 18.7 million viewers per game, the second highest since 1989, highlighting how every rights holder experienced growth this year, from major broadcasters to streamers.

--Field Level Media