ABC Scores With NFL Division Playoffs

• Viewership Expected to Exceed 33 Million Viewers When Nielsen Reports Final 
• AudienceAudience Already Surpasses Every NFL Game – Regular Season or Playoffs – on ESP
• Dating Back to 1987Across All Networks, NFL’s Best Viewership for a Divisional Saturday Afternoon 
• Kickoff in 10 SeasonsThird Consecutive Season ESPN Punctuates Season-Long NFL Campaign with 
• Its Most-Watched NFL Game Ever

ESPN’s 2025 NFL Divisional Round presentation delivered a record-breaking audience across ESPN platforms, as the Houston Texans at the Kansas City Chiefs (Saturday, Jan. 18, 4:30 p.m. ET) is the company’s most-watched NFL game of all-time. The 32.7 million viewers surpass each NFL on ESPN game, playoffs and regular season, since 1987 (38 seasons), the first year when the network aired NFL games.

ESPN’s Texans-Chiefs viewership is expected to surpass 33 million viewers when Nielsen reports the final audience this week. The current viewership of 32.7 million viewers includes the vast majority, but not all audiences from ESPN, ABC and ESPN+.

Additional ESPN’s Texans-Chiefs Viewership Highlights:

• NFL’s Best Divisional Saturday Afternoon Viewership in 10 Seasons: ESPN’s Texans-Chiefs viewership is the NFL’s top audience for a Divisional Saturday afternoon (4:30 p.m. kickoff) in 10 seasons, beginning in January 2016 to present, across all networks.
• ESPN Up Year-Over-Year: ESPN bested its own audience from the 2024 Divisional Round, which was also played on the same day and time slot, and earned a then-record audience of 32.3 million viewers.
• ESPN Delivers Saturday’s Top Peak Audience Across All Networks: ESPN’s audience peaked at 38.5 million viewers (7-7:15 p.m.), the highest peak audience of any network on Saturday, Jan. 18.
• Disney’s Most-Watched Non-Super Bowl NFL Game: ESPN’s Texans-Chiefs’ 32.7 million viewers marks Disney’s most-watched NFL game, excluding Super Bowls.
• The audience bested all 25 Disney NFL Playoff games in the previous 29 years, including 14 exclusively on ABC (1996-2005), ten available on ABC and ESPN (2016-24) and one solely on ESPN (2015).
• The game also surpassed every regular season game exclusively on ABC since 1996.

Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Lisa Salters Era Deliver ESPN’s Most-Watched Games

ESPN re-writing its own record books has become a modern trend, as each season of the Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and Lisa Salters era (2022-23, 23-24, and 24-25 seasons) has concluded with ESPN airing its most-watched game of all-time. In that same period, accounting for all games in regular season and postseason, ESPN has aired seven of its eight most-watched games.

Record Breaking Playoff Viewership Adds to ESPN’s Strong 2024-25 Season

ESPN’s record-breaking playoff viewership concludes the company’s 2024-25 season which delivered Monday Night Football’s second most-watched season in the ESPN era, joining the 2023 campaign as the two most- watched MNF seasons (2006 – present). This season, Monday Night Football averaged 15 million viewers a game and reached 112 million fans along the way.