The Seattle Seahawks outscored the Green Bay Packers by 20 points in Thursday’s National Football League season opener, and NBC just flat-out scored, pulling in 26.9 million viewers.
That total is good enough to be the third-most-watched NFL kickoff game in the event’s 13-year history. It amounted to a seven percent increase from last year’s opener, and was TV’s most-watched show since the 2014 Academy Awards (43.7 million viewers on March 2).
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Thursday’s opener trailed only 2011’s Saints-Packers kickoff between the then-two previous Super Bowl winners (27.1 million), and the 2010 (Vikings-Saints, 27.5 million) NFC Championship Game rematch, which featured Brett Favre playing for his former rivals.
In household ratings, Seattle-Green Bay brought in a 15.5 — a four percent uptick from 2013, and also third-best in 13 years.
On the online front, NBC Sports also boasted more than 25 million minutes streaming — breaking its old record for an NFL game.
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Here are the Top 10 metered TV markets from last night:
1. Milwaukee 44.0/64
2. Seattle 42.2/73
3. Minneapolis 26.6/44
4. New Orleans 25.2/38
5. Sacramento 21.2/35
6. San Diego 20.8/37
7. Denver 20.7/34
8. Norfolk 20.7/32
9. Nashville 20.6/31
10. Portland 20.4/38