Most-Watched Early Sunday NFL Wild Card Game on Record

The Seattle Seahawks’ 10-9 victory over the Minnesota Vikings in Sunday’s NFL Wild Card game on NBC ranked as the most-watched early Sunday Wild Card game on record, with 35.3 million viewers. Comparably, this is up by 25 percent from last year’s early Sunday Wild Card game (28.3 million for Bengals-Colts on CBS), and 27 percent above the last early Sunday NFC Wild Card game (27.7 million for Falcons-Giants, Jan. 8, 2012 on Fox). Viewership peaked at 43.9 million viewers for the game’s finish from 3:45-4 p.m. ET.
In households, the Seahawks-Vikings NFC Wild Card telecast (1:06-4:06 p.m. ET) earned a 21.0 rating/42 share, to rank as the highest-rated early Sunday Wild Card game in 21 years (22.0/48 for Patriots-Browns on NBC, 1/1/95). Comparably, this rating is up 24 percent from last year’s early Sunday Wild Card (17.0/35 for Bengals-Colts).

“NBC Sports Live Extra’s” presentation of the game totaled 20.0 million live streaming minutes, ranking as Live Extra’s most streamed NFL postseason game on record (excluding any Super Bowls), and up by 115 percent from last year’s NBC Saturday primetime Wild Card game (9.3 million live minutes for Ravens-Steelers).