It’s not just empty seats at NFL stadiums. It’s fewer eyes on the television screen too. After the first round of the playoffs this year, viewership is down 23 million over 2016. That includes all four playoff games from last Saturday and Sunday. Last year, there were a total of 144.1 million viewers for the four playoff division finals games. This year, there were only 120.8 million viewers for the same four playoff games, although obviously with different teams.
| NFL loses 23 million viewers for first round of playoffs over last year |
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The NFL has 23 million fewer viewers for this year’s playoff action, a new report says.
With the first round of this year’s NFL playoffs in the rear-view mirror, Outkick the Coverage’s Clay Travis took a look at the TV ratings and found that every game was down by millions of viewers and ratings fell to a ten-year low.Each of this year’s playoff games has lost over a million plus viewers, Travis said, with the biggest loser being the Saint-Vikings game which lost an incredible 13 million.
“Adding all these numbers up 120.8 million viewers watched the NFL divisional round playoffs in 2018 vs. 144.1 million who watched in 2017, a decline of 23.3 million total viewers,” Travis wrote.
Overall viewership declined over 16 percent, according to this reading of the numbers. It amounts to a ten-year low, Travis said.
Also, these numbers reflect an even worse decline on average than the regular season which itself lost about ten percent of viewers over the 2016 season.