The average US television audience for a regular-season NFL match in 2011-12 fell by 2.1 per cent year on-year to 17.5 million, according to audience measurement company Nielsen Media Research.
Pay-television broadcaster ESPN suffered the biggest drop of the NFL’s broadcasters, registering a 9.6-per-cent fall to 13.3 million viewers, but the NBC and CBS networks also attracted lower audiences. The Fox network’s figures were flat.
NBC’s coverage of the National Football Conference, which includes teams from larger television markets than the NFL’s other conference, the American Football Conference, generated an average audience of 21.5 million, a 1.4-per-cent drop. The Fox network, which also broadcast NFC games, registered the same average audience as 2010-11, with 20.1 million tuning in. CBS attracted an average of 18.4 million viewers – a 1.5-per-cent fall – for its coverage of the AFC.
The NFL said that 37 matches had attracted an average of at least 20 million viewers, beating the previous record of 35 regular-season games in 2010-11.
Despite the fall in regular-season viewing, NBC has sold out advertising spots for its coverage of this year’s Super Bowl game on February 5 – the title game following the NFL play-offs – for a record average fee of $3.5m (€2.7m) per 30 seconds.
In December, CBS, Fox and NBC acquired NFL rights in new agreements that will run from 2014-15 to 2022-23 and generate $3.1bn (€2.4bn) per year for the league. The rights fees represent a 63-per-cent increase on the current deals that are worth a total of $1.9bn with the same three broadcasters.