League logos

Super Bowl Contenders by the Numbers

Chiefs, Eagles Have Attracted 487.4M Total Viewers Since Week 1 of the 2022 Season

Anlayses of

No items found.
Broadcast
NFL
Social Media
Updated 
Published 
February 8, 2023
February 8, 2023
 | 
6
 min read

After a 17-game regular season, professional football’s two best teams were the NFC’s Philadelphia Eagles and AFC’s Kansas City Chiefs. So, it should come as little surprise that the same teams are the only two left standing as Super Bowl LVII approaches. Storylines abound for the heavyweight bout in Glendale, Arizona, this weekend – including Chiefs Head Coach Andy Reid facing his former team, a pair of brothers in Jason and Travis Kelce squaring off against each other, and the first matchup of African-American starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl history. Most importantly, however, the game will decide which organization wins its second NFL title since 2018 – the Eagles having triumphed in Super Bowl LII and the Chiefs following suit in Super Bowl LIV. With kickoff less than a week away, we used MVP’s omnichannel platform to examine the contenders’ overall reach across broadcast and social platforms throughout the season. In addition to highlighting linear broadcast viewership from each team’s 19 games played – 17 during the regular season and two in the playoffs to date – we explored DMA breakdowns for each franchise’s home market and a multitude of social metrics from the organizations’ owned channels. Strikingly, we found the Chiefs and Eagles have collectively drawn 487.4 million total television viewers for their games dating back to Week 1 in September.

Chiefs Earn Larger National Audiences

Over the past five seasons, no team in the NFL has been more consistently dominant than the Kansas City Chiefs, who have won 64 regular season games – at least 10 more than every other club – and reached five consecutive AFC Championship games. Accordingly, they have become a significant television draw both for fans who want to see what their high-powered offense will do next and those who watch with hopes of witnessing an upset. As such, Kansas City’s contests during the 2022 regular season and playoffs have drawn 277 million total television viewers. Excepting the game aired on Amazon Prime – which was only shown on broadcast television in local markets – the Chiefs’ average national audience this year has been 15.32 million. That figure is 31.5% higher than the Eagles’ average of 11.65 million viewers in games shown nationally. Furthermore, the Chiefs had higher average audiences for games shown on each of the NFL’s broadcast partners. They drew 14.27 million fans per game broadcast by FOX, compared to Philadelphia’s average national audience of 10.33 million on the network. The difference on CBS was 13.34 million to 9.44 million. Meanwhile, the gap narrowed for prime time games on the ABC/ESPN family of networks – 15.57 million to 14.16 million – and NBC, where the difference was only 1.2%.

Of the entire set of games we examined, Kansas City participated in three of the four most-watched contests. Unsurprisingly, the conference championship games ranked 1-2 on our list. The nightcap on Championship Sunday between Kansas City and Cincinnati led the way with 31.74 million viewers, followed by the NFC title game’s 27.56 million total. Rounding out the top five were the Chiefs’ divisional-round game against Jacksonville, a regular season game between the Chiefs and Buffalo, and Philadelphia’s divisional-round matchup with NFC East rival New York. Coincidentally, the Eagles’ most watched regular season game, ranking 7th overall on the list, was also a home game against the Giants. Overall, 53.8% of the Super Bowl competitors’ games drew at least 10 million household viewers, with nine of those games drawing television audiences exceeding 20 million.

Want to stay updated with the latest in sponsorship measurement trends?

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Philadelphia DMA Has Playoff Fever

The City of Brotherly Love champions its cherished teams louder than most markets, but the area’s fans collectively rise to a crescendo when the stakes are highest. A simple examination of viewership within Philadelphia during Eagles games demonstrates this phenomenon. Throughout the regular season, an average of 957,524 household viewers tuned in to watch Eagles games from the Philadelphia market – which boasts 3 million total households with linear television – meaning 31.9% of potential viewers per game watched the Birds. That figure jumped by 28.4% in the playoffs, as an average of 1.23 million fans in Philadelphia watched the Eagles’ pair of contests – equal to 41% of the total DMA. The highest share came during the NFC Championship, which propelled Philadelphia to Super Bowl LVII. As the Eagles defeated San Francisco, 43.2% of potential viewers in their home market were watching the game.

Throughout the regular season, however, the Kansas City market exhibited a stronger affinity for its Chiefs than Philadelphia showed its Eagles. With a DMA less than one-third as broad as Philadelphia’s, the Chiefs’ regular season average of 347,400 viewers per game equated to 35.2% of their potential home audience. Additionally, the Chiefs drew at least 33.3% of their potential viewers in all but two games this season – Week 2 against the Chargers and Week 16 against the Chiefs, both of which were home games. Conversely, the Eagles only reached that threshold thrice during the regular season.

Eagles Demonstrate Slight Social Edge

As kickoff at State Farm Stadium nears, each team’s social media department will undoubtedly build excitement for the matchup across their owned channels and detail the journeys that have led to the sport’s grandest stage. However, fans of the contenders know much of that groundwork has already been laid, as the Eagles and Chiefs have been active on social all season. We used MVP’s platform to explore each team’s content shared on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube throughout the five months ending February 5. The time frame captures a full week lead-up to the season’s opening games and the seven days following Conference Championship Sunday. In that time, the Chiefs and Eagles collectively posted 10,791 pieces of content across their owned channels, with Philadelphia accounting for 57.8% of that total.

In addition to posting more frequently, the Eagles boast 2.75 million more followers than their foes on Sunday. Partially because of these factors, Philadelphia’s 68.3 million engagements this season exceeded Kansas City’s total by 37.2%. Similarly, the Eagles’ 1.51 billion impressions surpassed the Chiefs’ season-long total of 1.08 billion while they also won the total post value battle by a margin of $29.3M to $19.9M.

Nevertheless, Chiefs Kingdom flexed its social muscle during the postseason. Despite Kansas City’s smaller following, it bested Philadelphia in both total impressions and post value throughout the week ending January 30. With an array of posts celebrating their third AFC championship in five years, the Chiefs generated $2.97M worth of post value during the period thanks to 161 million impressions – pipping the Eagles’ totals of $2.9M in post value and 149.4 million impressions. However, the Eagles did maintain their engagements edge – which they earned in all but four of the 21 complete weeks during our analysis – with a 7.7 million to 7.32 million difference.

Will Eagles Fly or Shall Chiefs Reign?

The two strongest NFL teams throughout the 2022 regular season are evidently backed by fervent fan bases eager to rejoice in yet another Super Bowl victory on Sunday. The Philadelphia market will almost assuredly exceed its season-high viewership total of 1.29 million, while Kansas City promises to continue its pattern of drawing more than 33.3% of potential viewers in the area. And social teams for the Eagles and Chiefs will unquestionably ramp up their content production to update their followers at every turn. We will monitor broadcast and social channels closely, so stay connected with MVP for comprehensive Super Bowl media measurement insights in the weeks to come.

Contact Us

What to Expect

Let's have a call to understand your measurement goals.

Take a look at our product and methodology with a demo.

Align our products and services to your needs in a tailored package.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

You May Also Like