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Taylor Swift’s attendance of Sunday’s Kansas City Chiefs-New York Jets game helped NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” score a huge ratings win, averaging 27 million viewers across all platforms, according to live-plus-same-day data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. The program became the most-watched Sunday since Super Bowl LVII on Fox in February.
As NFL fans and Swifties tuned in to watch the singer cheer in the crowd alongside Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, the program saw an approximate viewership increase of two million female viewers. NBC reported that viewing among girls 12-17 grew 53% Sunday over the first three broadcasts of “Sunday Night Football” this season. The audience among women 18-24 was up 24%, and women over 35 grew 34%.
The game also drew a 22% increase over last year’s Week 4 game (22.2 million as Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs faced Tom Brady and the Buccaneers).
Viewing on Peacock, NBC Sports Digital platforms and NFL Digital platforms averaged 1.85 million viewers, marking NBC Sports’ largest streaming audience ever for a regular-season Sunday NFL game, and up 42% from last year’s Week 4 game.
Swift has been romantically linked to Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce since appearing at last Sunday’s NFL game. The singer also lent her music to a “Taylor Made for Sunday Night” game promo for “Sunday Night Football,” which was viewed approximately eight million times, according to NBC.
Viewership peaked at an estimated 29.4 million viewers between 9:30-9:45 p.m. ET, according to the network, as the Jets pulled to within eight points of the Chiefs in the second quarter. Kansas City ended up winning the game 23-20.
With Sunday’s game and the Sept. 7 NFL kick-off game (27.5 million for Lions-Chiefs), NBC Sports has now aired the two most-watched NFL games this season. Final figures for Sunday’s programming lineup will be available Tuesday.
