Television and streaming audiences favored the National Football League’s season-opening game over a high-profile political address on the same night, Nielsen viewership figures cited by NBC’s sports division show.
The Kickoff Game - a rematch of last season’s Super Bowl LX between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots - averaged more than 25 million viewers across NBC and Peacock. That marks the fourth straight year the season opener has reached that audience level, according to the Comcast-owned network’s sports arm.
Beyond total viewers, NBC reported that the game delivered its largest Kickoff Game audience among adults 18 to 49 since 2021. Across NBC, Peacock and the company’s digital platforms, the 18-49 demographic averaged 10 million viewers, a key metric for advertisers seeking younger adult consumers.
The matchup aired on the same night as the inaugural night of the Republican midterm convention, at which former President Donald Trump spoke. Trump asserted that the convention’s "overall numbers beat the NFL," but he did not provide supporting figures or explain the method behind that claim.
Nielsen’s measurement for the speech indicated an audience of roughly 2.5 million viewers, a figure that appears substantially lower than the NFL Kickoff Game audience cited by NBC.
Separately, the NFL’s first regular-season game staged in Australia attracted sizable U.S. viewership on a streaming platform. Netflix streamed the contest between the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams to an average U.S. audience of 18.5 million viewers, with a peak of 21.3 million.
The reported numbers highlight the continued reach of live sports across both traditional broadcast and streaming services, and the particular value placed on the advertiser-prized 18-49 audience. Comcast and Netflix market indicators referenced alongside the ratings data included short-form market moves for the parent companies.
Methodology note: The audience figures above are drawn from Nielsen data cited by NBC’s sports division and from reported Netflix streaming numbers. Public comments from the convention and network statements provided the comparative context.