Do you watch TV?
Then the odds are very, very high that you’re watching the NFL. Television networks still show things that aren’t NFL games, but NFL games are the most popular things on TV, by a very wide margin.
This isn’t news: Periodically, a news event reminds us of the NFL’s dominance of the TV landscape — like the deal Disney’s ESPN cut with the league last year, done in large part to secure a few more NFL games.
And every year we see a new report telling us that NFL games are the most widely viewed programming on TV — in 2025, 83 of the top 100 programs were NFL games; that’s up from 72 in 2024.
But it’s always good to get a reminder. This one comes from the NFL itself, via a presentation it made to the Federal Communications Commission last month. It underlines that, when it comes to broadcast TV, there are NFL games — which are now averaging close to 20 million viewers — and everything else. (Non-sports TV averages around 3 million viewers during prime time.)
The viewership counts include anything aired by a broadcast network — like ABC or CBS, whether on rabbit ears, cable, or YouTube TV.
Yes, this is the NFL’s framing. It’s meant to push back against criticisms from FCC head Brendan Carr and others, who complain that the league is abandoning free broadcast TV by selling too many games to streamers like Netflix and Amazon. But it’s still accurate, using numbers from Nielsen.
It is also a reminder that for some broadcasters — mostly Paramount’s CBS and the Murdochs’ Fox — delivering NFL games to viewers is the primary reason they still exist.
And that prompts some observers — like LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield — to wonder whether the networks should be spending money on anything that isn’t NFL games.
“The obvious question is why broadcast networks bother investing in general entertainment programming, from scripted television series to unscripted/reality TV to morning shows and late night shows,” he wrote in a recent note.
We’re not there yet. But an early indicator to watch will be what Paramount does with its late-night slot, still occupied by Stephen Colbert, but soon to be replaced, in the near-term, by two syndicated shows from media entrepreneur Byron Allen (you may recall that Allen said he wanted to buy Paramount a few years ago). Allen will be renting the late-night slots from CBS, meaning that instead of spending money to fill that airtime, Paramount will be making money.
That’s a drastic way to approach an NFL-or-nothing reality. But we might see more of it.
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