In television there are no gray areas, no middle ground. You’re either at the top of the heap with all your enemies slain at your feet—which is to say that you are an active NFL media partner—or you’re locked in a gas station toilet filled with bees. The bees are incredibly angry about something, and you left your EpiPen behind the Auntie Anne’s kiosk at the Short Hills Mall.
If you’re the CMO of a company that spends a fair amount of coin on national TV time, your best shot at warding off bug-borne anaphylaxis is to pick up a package of in-game NFL inventory during the spring upfront bazaar. First-time advertisers can set themselves up nicely with a $25 million introductory buy, which only sounds like a lot if you’re still trying to stitch together your target audience by way of multiple units in sitcoms and doctor shows.
As much as the entry-level cost of reaching the NFL’s colossal audience may sting a bit, there’s no getting around the fact that pro football is the most ruthlessly efficient way to reach the greatest number of consumers. The fall sports boom coincides with the prodigal fourth quarter, that holiday-juiced interval during which Americans spend about $300 billion more on stuff than they do during the entire rest of the year. For anyone who wants to get those registers ringing while people are hellbent on emptying their wallets, the NFL is the only game in town.
If the stinging insects don’t have you convinced, maybe a little math will do the trick. Case in point: While NBC’s Sunday Night Football this past season scared up 6.57 million adults 18-49, the average live-same-day demo delivery for a broadcast entertainment show in 2024-25 is currently hovering around 418,000 per episode. In other words, NBC’s NFL showcase serves up more than 15-and-a-half times as many advertiser-coveted viewers as does everything else in primetime.
Of course, NBC is not the NFL’s only delivery system, as the league continues to parcel out packages to an ever-expanding roster of media partners. Anyone who wishes to watch each of the 272 regular-season games will need access to over-the-air TV (NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC), a couple basic cable channels (ESPN, NFL Network) and a bunch of streaming services (Amazon’s Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube, Peacock, ESPN+). That there are more platforms aligned with the NFL than at any time before means that there are also more opportunities to reach fans while they’re watching the league’s signature content. What follows is a list of the games that should give NFL advertisers the optimum number of impressions among an engaged, enraptured audience—provided you can work something out with all those bees.
Top 10 Projected NFL Telecasts, 2025
1) Chiefs at Cowboys (CBS Thanksgiving Day Game, Nov. 27) 43.4M viewers
In his last turn at the helm of the NFL’s schedule-making apparatus, Howard Katz, senior VP of broadcasting and media operations, has dispensed altogether with subtlety in favor of an almost giddy show of blunt force. Because the Cowboys’ Turkey Day ritual is such an automatic draw, the league has never had to be particularly choosy about which team it sends to JerryWorld on Tryptophan Thursday. Last year’s window averaged 38.8 million viewers on Fox, and that was despite the fact that Dallas’ opponent was a woeful Giants squad. Imagine, then, what CBS can expect when Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and his chanteuse buddy roll into Arlington during our great secular holiday. With the expansion of Nielsen’s out-of-home panel, we may even be low-balling it here. Sure, it’ll cost you more than $1 million per unit, but this holiday treat should be worth every penny.
2) Packers at Lions (Fox Thanksgiving Day Game, Nov. 27) 40.7M viewers
If the early Lions game used to be seen as an appetizer to the main course down in Texas, Dan Campbell’s bunch has remanded that way of thinking to the Kids’ Table. With an average draw of 22.7 million viewers in its national TV windows, Detroit last year was the NFL’s star attraction, edging Dallas by around 200,000 viewers per game. Fittingly, Katz has rewarded the Lions with no fewer than 12 coast-to-coast media appearances, and this Fox outing will be the most-watched of any of them.
3) Chiefs at Bills (CBS National Window, Nov. 2) 33.8M viewers
Bill Cowher, who turned 68 just last week, was so fired up about seeing to his pregame NFL Today duties from Orchard Park that he threw himself into a folding table. Little wonder. If the rivalry between Mahomes and Josh Allen doesn’t make you want to demolish shoddily-made furniture with your body, then you’re probably already dead. We’ve run out of superlatives for this pairing, and CBS is about to run out of inventory. Act now or be shut out of the national water cooler conversation.
4) Cowboys at Eagles (NBC Kickoff Window, Sept. 4) 29.3M viewers
Another example of Katz lugging coals to Newcastle. The NFL could schedule a UFL team to host Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem in the season opener, and NBC would still put up numbers; instead, fans can look forward to kicking off the fall campaign with an NFC East battle between the Super Bowl champs and America’s Team. If you’re a rival network, just throw up the color bars and call it a night.
5) Packers at Cowboys (NBC Sunday Night Football, Sept. 28) 28.2M viewers
It’s rare that Fox doesn’t snag this battle between two of the NFL’s biggest brands, but NBC wound up making off with the matchup this time around. The last regular-season meeting in 2022 was decided in overtime and served up 29.2 million viewers in 92% of the available markets. Dallas will look to avenge its 2024 playoff loss to Green Bay, while the Pack hope to see Jordan Love make the step up to the elite tier of QBs. Buy or die.
6) Eagles at Chiefs (Fox National Window, Sept. 14) 27.8M viewers
Like the pope, Jake from State Farm is a Chicago guy, but since he also knows which side his bread is buttered on, he probably pretends to root for the Chiefs—at least when he’s within arm’s reach of Andy Reid. But guess what? Word from the Vatican has it that Pope Leo XIV is thisclose to declaring Saquon Barkley infallible. Holy smokes is this one going to be a lot of fun.
7) Bengals at Bills (Fox National Window, Dec. 7) 25.2M viewers
A rare all-AFC spree for Fox, which looks to make a killing with its NFC North-heavy schedule. While CBS has won the ratings race the past two years running, Fox in 2025 will be the beneficiary of a record slate of 11 doubleheaders, and this Week 14 capper features two quarterbacks who connected on a combined 71 touchdown passes last season. Think of this as a dress rehearsal for the AFC Championship Game.
8) Eagles at Bills (Fox National Window, Dec. 28) 24.7M viewers
If they ever make a Broadway musical based on the Barry Manilow song Copacabana, the part of Rico will be played by Josh Allen’s mustache. The Eagles and Bills may be running this one back just 42 days later.
9) Lions at Packers (CBS National Window, Dec. 7) 24.4M viewers
Like investing in a line of beer cozies that have the “Serenity Prayer” embossed on the sides, Lions-Packers games are almost always a dumb, fun and crazy bit of business. One of sports’ longest-running rivalries plays out inside a place that’s become synonymous with a bruising, no-quarter-asked/none-given brand of football: This is how you kick off the Sunday afternoon national window.
10) Commanders at Chiefs (ABC/ESPN Monday Night Football, Oct. 27) 23.7M
If it’s weird and probably more than a bit unfair to be casting Mahomes in the role of the NFL’s eminence grise, that’s what earning a spot in five of the last six Super Bowl gets you. The Chiefs’ leader will have celebrated his 30th birthday when Arrowhead rolls out the red-and-gold carpet for Jayden Daniels & Co., but given the weird dilation of post-COVID time and the Chiefs’ watery ubiquity, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Mahomes went to high school with Sid Luckman. (Matthew Brady took their yearbook pictures.) Daniels last year looked for all the world like the eventual successor to Mahomes’ greatness, and while it’s pointless to saddle a 24-year-old with unbounded hype, it’s not as if he’s ever going to read this. But you sure did.
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