NFL TV Ratings: Conference Championship Games Present Ups & Downs

Tom Brady. (Getty)

Although the television ratings for National Football League games this postseason have been improvements over NFL regular season games, they still leave something to be desired for the NFL.

Yesterday’s NFC Championship Game between the Atlanta Falcons and Green Bay Packers drew an overnight rating of 27.4 according to Sportstvratings.com’s sources with Fox Sports. That represents an improvement over last year’s NFC title contest, but also a worsened performance as compared to 2016’s early conference championship game (31.8).

The AFC Championship Game drew nearly identical ratings according to Nielsen, snagging a 27.6 overnight rating. The game drew 41.25 million viewers per Rick Porter of TVratingsbythenumbers.com, which was a slight increase over 2016’s late game (40.69 million) but the share of the 18-49 market (13.4) was down from 2016 (14.3).

While this represents the second consecutive year that the NFL conference championship game ratings have declined, these numbers still represent a massive improvement over how the NFL performed during the regular season.

The final Sunday Night Football game of the 2016-17 regular season drew 23.82 million viewers and a 7.4 among the 18-49 crowd. The season’s final Monday night game drew a 5.8 among the 18-49 crowd, and a total of 18.6 million viewers.

The takeaway for the NFL here is that the playoffs are still ratings gold, but that gold appears to be losing some of its shine.

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