Love them or hate them, football fans can’t help but tune in and watch the Kansas City Chiefs — who just broke an NFL record spanning back to “at least” 1988.
On January 28, sports correspondent John Ourand reported that “the [Buffalo] Bills-Chiefs Championship game averaged 57.7 million viewers, making it the most-watched AFC Championship game dating back to at least 1988.”
Ourand also added that Chiefs-Bills is now “the NFL’s second most-watched non Super Bowl game behind the 2009-10 [Minnesota] Vikings–[New Orleans] Saints on Fox.” And that these AFC Championship viewership numbers are “up 4% from last year’s [Baltimore] Ravens-Chiefs game that was in the early window.”
Ourand attributed all of these statistics to Nielsen.
Chiefs vs. Bills Drew Nearly Half the Number of Viewers as the 2024 Super Bowl
To put these viewership numbers in perspective. Last year, in February of 2024, Nielsen reported that the Super Bowl between the Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers produced an “estimated 123.7 million viewers… according to average audience estimates.”
That means Sunday’s AFC Championship game drew nearly half the number of viewers as last year’s big game, which is extremely impressive historically speaking.
It also crushed the most-watched NFL game of November through December (2024) by almost 20 million viewers.
“While FOX delivered the most-watched program across the month—the Thanksgiving Day NFL game between the [Dallas] Cowboys and the [New York] Giants, which drew 38.5 million viewers and 8.2 billion viewing minutes—it was hard to match the company-best record it set in November thanks to boosts from the World Series and presidential election coverage,” Nielsen reported on January 28. “The result of the absence was a 14% drop in viewership to finish December with 7.1% of TV.”
Clearly, based on playoff viewership, the NFL continues to reign supreme across America, and it’s also gaining more and more traction around the globe. Superstar quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen are surely a big part of that, as is the influence of celebrities like Taylor Swift who were in attendance to watch the Chiefs and Bills.
Eagles Given 52.8% Chance of Defeating Chiefs in Super Bowl 59
According to Pro Football Network and their PFN Playoff Predictor, the Philadelphia Eagles actually have a 52.8% chance of beating the Chiefs — despite the fact that Kansas City has won the past two Super Bowls. These figures are “based on PFN’s win probability model, which ran 10,000 simulations.”
To be clear, the oddsmakers in Las Vegas disagreed with this simulator, siding with the Chiefs and setting the initial Super Bowl line at -2 in favor of KC. The line has since moved to -1.5 according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
So, despite being the betting favorite, Kansas City is still being looked at as an underdog by some estimations.
Philadelphia does profile as a difficult challenger. They finished 14-3 this season, just one victory behind the Chiefs, and they ranked second in the NFC heading into the playoffs.
Only the Detroit Lions (15-2) had a better record in the opposing conference.
In terms of betting trends, per Pro Football Network, “the Eagles are 18-8 [against the spread] (69.2%) when facing a team that enters play with at least as many wins as losses (second best, trailing only the 20-6-1 Lions)” since 2022.
On the other side of things, the Chiefs have been dominant in one-score games this season, with “17 straight one-score wins” spanning back to last year’s Super Bowl run and regular season. They are “12-0” in one-score games in 2024-25. Per Pro Football Network, “12 one-score wins is [tied for] the most in a single season all-time.”
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