NFL TV viewership in Canada up ten per cent

Overall Canadian TV viewership for NFL games is up 10 per cent over last year at this time, and has skyrocketed on Sunday nights.

Last year’s season average audience on Sunday nights north of the border was 362,000. This season through Week 5 it’s 597,000, a 53 per cent increase over the same timeframe in 2016 — a staggering increase.

This, according to viewership numbers provided Friday to Postmedia by Bell Media.

Each week the media giant airs NFL English-language games in Canada primarily on its bellwether networks, CTV and TSN — on Sunday afternoons (in a doubleheader), Sunday nights, Monday nights and Thursday nights.

While NFL viewership this season in the U.S. has declined, in Canada it has risen not only on Sunday nights but on the other two viewing nights — up 18 per cent on Mondays (to 514,000) and up 12 per cent on Thursdays (to 550,000), Bell Media said.

Sportsnet in previous years carried Thursday night games, and in both 2015 and 2016 it averaged 263,000 viewers, with a 2016 season high of 518,500 for the Dallasat-Minnesota game on Dec. 1.

In the U.S., the highest-watched weekly NFL game throughout the regular season — indeed, the highest-rated program annually on U.S. TV, period — is Sunday Night Football.

In Canada, the afternoon doubleheader on Sundays remains the most popular viewership window. But audience numbers have declined so far in 2017, Bell Media said — by 10 per cent in the earlyafternoon window to 668,000, and by 6 per cent in the late-afternoon window to 712,000.

Overall last season, early-afternoon games on Sundays were up seven per cent from 2015 to a Canadian-record average audience of 743,000, according to Numeris figures supplied by CTV in January. Late-afternoon games on Sundays were up two per cent in 2016 from 2015, to 888,000.

Sunday-afternoon NFL viewership numbers in Canada traditionally jump after the conclusion of the CFL season in November.

Sunday night viewership in the U.S. last year dropped 10 per cent.

Earlier this week the Sporting News reported that NFL TV ratings in the U.S. are down overall in 2017 — specifically, seven per cent year-over-year and 15 per cent over the same timeframe compared to 2015, the record year in America for NFL TV ratings.

The average TV audience for all NFL games this season in the U.S. is 15.156 million viewers, down from 16.371 million in 2016, and from 18.438 million in 2015.

Overall NFL viewership in Canada last year rose two per cent over 2015.