NFL Games Dominate Everything Else on Broadcast TV: Chart

Do you watch TV?

Then the chances are very, very excessive that you just’re watching the NFL. Tv networks nonetheless present issues that are not NFL video games, however NFL video games are the preferred issues on TV, by a really large margin.

This is not information: Periodically, a information occasion reminds us of the NFL’s dominance of the TV panorama — just like the deal Disney’s ESPN cut with the league last year, executed largely to safe just a few extra NFL video games.

And yearly we see a brand new report telling us that NFL video games are probably the most broadly seen programming on TV — in 2025, 83 of the top 100 programs were NFL games; that is up from 72 in 2024.

However it’s all the time good to get a reminder. This one comes from the NFL itself, by way of a presentation it made to the Federal Communications Commission final month. It underlines that, with regards to broadcast TV, there are NFL video games — which at the moment are averaging shut to twenty million viewers — and every thing else. (Non-sports TV averages round 3 million viewers throughout prime time.)

The viewership counts embody something aired by a broadcast community — like ABC or CBS, whether or not on rabbit ears, cable, or YouTube TV.

Sure, that is the NFL’s framing. It is meant to push again in opposition to criticisms from FCC head Brendan Carr and others, who complain that the league is abandoning free broadcast TV by promoting too many video games to streamers like Netflix and Amazon. However it’s nonetheless correct, utilizing numbers from Nielsen.

Additionally it is a reminder that for some broadcasters — largely Paramount’s CBS and the Murdochs’ Fox — delivering NFL video games to viewers is the first cause they nonetheless exist.

And that prompts some observers — like LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield — to wonder if the networks ought to be spending cash on something that is not NFL video games.

“The apparent query is why broadcast networks hassle investing basically leisure programming, from scripted tv collection to unscripted/actuality TV to morning reveals and late night time reveals,” he wrote in a current notice.

We’re not there but. However an early indicator to observe might be what Paramount does with its late-night slot, still occupied by Stephen Colbert, however quickly to get replaced, within the near-term, by two syndicated reveals from media entrepreneur Byron Allen (you might recall that Allen said he wanted to buy Paramount a few years ago). Allen might be renting the late-night slots from CBS, which means that as a substitute of spending cash to fill that airtime, Paramount will be making money.

That is a drastic solution to strategy an NFL-or-nothing actuality. However we would see extra of it.