TV Ratings: NFL Debut On YouTube Averaged 17.3M Viewers

The NFL’s debut on Google’s YouTube channel averaged 17.3 million viewers on Friday, based on Nielsen and YouTube data. 

The average minute audience (AMA) for the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Los Angeles Chargers game in Sao Paulo, Brazil, included 16.2 million AMAs in the U.S. across YouTube and other platforms, plus 1.1 million AMAs internationally.

However, competitors criticized Nielsen’s non-accredited data. Fox Sports’ Mike Mulvihill called Nielsen’s exclusion of the YouTube data from other clients a “flagrant departure” from transparency, tweeting, “When it comes to streamers, the rules simply don’t apply.” 

ESPN’s Flora Kelly also questioned the methodology, noting it wasn’t Media Rating Council-accredited and used a custom process combining YouTube’s internal data with Nielsen’s analytics, unlike Nielsen’s standard “Big Data + Panel” approach, which integrates human panels, set-top box data, and smart TV data.

This differed from how viewership is measured for networks, prompting claims of unfair comparison. For context, Amazon’s (AMZN) Thursday Night Football averaged 13.2 million viewers, while NBC’s (CMCSA) Sunday Night Football averaged 21.4 million viewers (including streaming) in the 2024 NFL season.