The first National Football League (NFL) game of the 2024 season drew 33 million viewers to Comcast’s NBC and Peacock on Thursday, according to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics data released by the network.
The viewership figure counts the number of people tuned in on broadcast TV and streaming platforms during the second quarter of the game, with peak viewership logged between 9:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. Eastern Time, the network said.
Overall, the game averaged 28.9 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. It was the most-watched NFL kickoff game in history, Comcast said.
The average minute audience for Peacock was around 4.6 million, Comcast said, citing data from Adobe Analytics. The figure indicates most football fans who watched the game did so on NBC, either through a pay TV platform like cable or satellite, or by using an over-the-air antenna. It follows a similar trend revealed during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, when most people watched live and replay events on NBC and Comcast-owned cable networks over Peacock.
Not surprisingly, Comcast said the game drew the largest TV audiences in the Kansas City and Baltimore markets. In Kansas City, the local NBC affiliate is KSHB (Channel 41), owned by the E. W. Scripps Company; in Baltimore, Hearst Television owns NBC affiliate WBAL-TV (Channel 11).
Outside the home areas of each team playing, Denver registered the largest TV audience, where viewers flocked to TEGNA-owned KUSA (Channel 9) to watch the Thursday game.
None of the 12 stations represented on Comcast’s “Top metered markets” list for the Thursday game are owned by NBC Universal.
Football games played on Thursdays are typically offered by Amazon’s Prime Video, which has the exclusive rights to “Thursday Night Football,” but the Week 1 game of each season is usually broadcast by a traditional TV network as part of their multi-year media rights agreement with the NFL.
Prime Video will take over Thursday broadcast duties for NFL games starting next week, with a match-up between the Buffalo Bills and the Miami Dolphins streaming on that app and co-owned Twitch at 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time.
