The Los Angeles Rams beat the San Francisco 49ers 20-17 on Sunday to clinch the NFC Championship in a Fox primetime broadcast that drew more than 50 million viewers, making it the most-watched NFC Championship since 2014.
A total of 50.420 million viewers tuned in across Fox, Fox Deportes, Fox Sports streaming platforms, NFL Digital and Yahoo Sports properties for the telecast. Viewership for the game peaked at 55.218 million from 9:15-9:30 p.m. ET.
The Rams will face the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI next month, following the Bengals scoring a dramatic upset win over the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL’s AFC Championship game, which aired on CBS Sunday afternoon.
That game averaged 47.851 million viewers and is the most-watched of the NFL conference championship games that aired during the “early” window in six years, since the New England Patriots-Denver Broncos’ AFC Championship game drew 53.300 million viewers in 2016. The Bengals-Chiefs game peaked with 60.990 million viewers, marking the third consecutive week a CBS NFL game has topped the 50-million audience-members mark.
This year’s Super Bowl, which was already scheduled to be played in the Rams’ home turf of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood prior to their NFC Championship win, will air Feb. 13 on NBC.
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Sunday’s impressive viewership for the NFC and AFC Championship games continues a streak of very strong Nielsen returns for the NFL this season.
Last Sunday’s Kansas City Chiefs-Buffalo Bills game on CBS was the most-watched NFL divisional playoff game on any network in five years, drawing a total audience delivery (TAD) of 43 million viewers, according to final time-zone adjusted data. The Chiefs’ dramatic overtime win over the Bills, airing from 6:41-10:02 p.m. ET, scored the largest audience for an NFL divisional playoff game since the Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys game on Jan. 15., 2017, which brought in 49 million viewers.
NBC’s Sunday afternoon divisional playoff game, which saw the Los Angeles Rams defeat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, drew a TAD of 40 million viewers, which is up 47% from last year’s comparable NBC Sports divisional playoff game. That tally makes it the most-watched NBC Sports NFL game — exclusive Super Bowls — since the 2006 debut of “Sunday Night Football.”
