The NFL’s 2026 season opener between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks drew an average of 25.1 million viewers on national network NBC – an 11% drop from last year’s kick-off game and the least-watched start of a season since 2022.
Last Wednesday’s (September 9) game – a rematch between February’s Super Bowl teams – averaged 25.1 million viewers on NBC and streaming platform Peacock, according to data provided by audience measurement firm Nielsen.
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The figure is a fall from last year’s audience of 28.3 million who tuned in to watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Philadelphia Eagles for the 2025 season opener, which was played on a Thursday.
Viewership of this year’s game, meanwhile, peaked at 27.4 million viewers from 9 to 9.15 pm ET, while Telemundo’s Spanish-language coverage averaged an additional 423,000 viewers.
The broadcaster noted that the game scored strong viewership in the highly-coveted 18 to 49 demographic, with 10 million watching the action – the best audience for an NFL season-opener in that category since 2021.
The NFL also secured its fourth consecutive year of kickoff games with more than 25 million in average viewership.
This year’s NBC audience figure is the first NFL viewership data using a Nielsen-only methodology. Last year’s combined audience figure of 28.3 million was split between Nielsen’s linear audience (23.3 million) and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics (4.9 million).
NBC is no longer reporting combined Nielsen and Adobe Analytics figures for NFL games, announcing it will only use a Nielsen number that includes its first-party streaming data to deliver more accurate audience data.
The broadcaster also reported a Nielsen-only figure for this year’s Super Bowl viewership in February.
In practice, the Nielsen-only figures should be similar to NBC’s combined numbers, given the first party streaming data tracked by Adobe Analytics is included in the Nielsen-only number.
The major difference is that Adobe Analytics did not carve out age-related data from its streaming figures, while Nielsen does, giving NBC the ability to now report larger audiences in the younger demographics.
The season-opening numbers come after it was announced that the NFL’s Melbourne Game 2026 between the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams on September 11 delivered an average audience of 18.5 million on US rights holder Netflix.
Last year’s equivalent Week 1 International Series game in Brazil between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers aired on video streaming platform YouTube averaged the same number; however, the figure was based on custom Nielsen methodology that is not directly comparable.
The Melbourne Game peaked with 21.3 million at 9.30 pm Eastern Time and was the least-watched of the five NFL games shown via Netflix so far; however, the other four all aired on Christmas Day, which usually yields higher numbers.
Domestically, the game delivered a record-breaking viewership for commercial broadcaster Seven Network as 2.19 million Australians tuned in to see the 49ers beat the Rams 27-7.
The game, shown via Seven’s linear channel and the 7Plus Sport streaming service, drew a national total TV audience of 938,000, making it the most-watched NFL game ever on Seven (including the annual season-ending Super Bowl).
Meanwhile, more than 155,000 people watched the game via 7plus Sport, which also set a record for the streaming platform.
