We’re getting the viewership numbers for both NFL Divisional Playoff games. The surprising development was that the New Orleans-San Francisco game on Fox did better than the Denver-New England contest on CBS. Of course, Saints-49ers had four lead changes in the last four minutes of the game while Broncos-Pates was over at the opening kickoff.
Denver-New England did have a silver lining for CBS being the most watched Saturday primetime Divisional Playoff game since the Saturday 8 p.m. ET window was created in 2002. However, Saints-49ers became the most watched Divisional Playoff game on any network since 1988 and when you hear that, you realize how many people were watching on Saturday.
Sports Business Journal sports media writer extraordinaire John Ourand has the first report of the average viewership numbers today.
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And John notes that the viewership peaked just before 8 p.m.
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And the average number is close to my revised prediction last night of 31 million for New Orleans-San Francisco.
And for Denver-New England, Liz Kelly Nelson at zap2it notes that the average viewership for CBS was 29 million. I called for 25.3 million in my revised prediction. I’m surprised the game came close to 30 million viewers.
We’ll get final numbers tomorrow. And I’m still waiting on a Fox Sports press release. Hopefully I’ll get some local ratings as well.
