The NFL is approaching the middle chunk of the 2025 regular season with even more momentum in its viewership.

The league concluded Week 5 with an average per-game viewership of 18.58 million, the highest level at this point of the season since 2010, and the second-largest such mark on record. The current figure is also up 8% from the comparable average last year and up 9% from 2023. 

In recent years, October has often been a softer part of the schedule for NFL viewership, as the league faces greater competition from Major League Baseball playoffs and the start of new seasons for the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association. Even as MLB is posting its own robust gains this postseason, the most recent set of NFL games contained a series of notable achievements. Among them:

• CBS garnered its best Week 5 singleheader viewership since it regained NFL rights in 1998, averaging 19.6 million viewers for an early-afternoon window led by coverage of the Broncos-Eagles game.
• Fox averaged 20.3 million viewers for its America’s Game of the Week broadcast of Commanders-Chargers, helping fuel a 3% increase so far this season in that key late-afternoon Sunday slot. 
• ESPN averaged 22.3 million for the Monday Night Football matchup between the Chiefs and Jaguars, by far the most-watched Week 5 MNF contest since it began airing those games in 2006. The Chiefs-Jaguars broadcast also ranks as the No. 10 most-watched NFL game of the season.

The top overall game of the season remains the Week 2 clash between the Eagles and Chiefs that averaged 33.8 million viewers and was a rematch of Super Bowl LIX in February.

Some of the NFL audience increases are due to Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology, which brings in tens of millions of additional data points from set-top boxes and smart TVs and is designed to present a fuller picture of viewer behaviors. That process has also been a boon for college football. 

The NFL, however, has strengthened its hold across not only sports but all of U.S. culture, as the league has now claimed the top 25 spots across American television since the start of the current broadcast season. The league, meanwhile, continues to segment its schedule effectively to create more stand-alone windows for individual games.

LSU has already signed a multimillion-dollar jersey patch sponsor deal, even before the NCAA approves a new proposal to allow commercial logos on uniforms.

“We have signed an agreement,” LSU deputy AD and chief revenue officer Clay Harris tells Front Office Sports. “We’ve mapped it out—it’ll be on all of our uniforms, every sport.”

College teams are currently prohibited from selling sponsored jersey patches, like teams in the NBA, MLB, and NHL do. But on Wednesday, the Division I Administrative Committee introduced a proposal that would allow schools to place one commercial logo on equipment used by athletes. A final proposal is expected to be voted on in January, and if adopted, the rule change would be effective Aug. 1, 2026.

Harris is “very confident” the measure will be approved, which is why his team has been working on the implementation of jersey patch sponsors for the past 12 months. In June, Harris told The New Orleans Times-Picayune that he hoped the NCAA would adopt the new policy, and the outlet reported LSU had “identified a partner … if the rule changes.” LSU would be the first program known to have a deal in place.

“It will take time for schools to move on this,” says Harris, citing the work LSU has had to do with its equipment staff and even apparel provider Nike.

Harris would not say who the company is, or exactly how much they have agreed to pay, but speculated that the Tigers can “rival some of the top pro sports teams” in jersey patch dollars. “The value of an LSU or another big brand in college sports, across all sports, could come close to what a pro sports team is getting,” he says. 

While some top-tier franchises like the Knicks, Yankees, Warriors, and Lakers have signed jersey patch deals reportedly in the ranges of $20 million to $30 million annually, the average annual value of most deals is much lower, often below $10 million.

“We went through a very extensive process on the valuation piece, because we wanted to make sure we got that right,” Harris says. “We did some internal studies—we started with pro sports and had a pretty good idea of what pro sports patches were going for. And so we based it off of that.”

LSU has already been selling sponsored patches on practice jerseys and even its mascot, Mike the Tiger. This football season, the school joined the new trend of selling a field sponsor deal for the first time, with Venture Global now appearing at the 25-yard lines of Tiger Stadium. 

The jersey patch proposal is one of several NCAA policy changes gaining traction this week, including new transfer portal rules and college athletes potentially being allowed to bet on professional sports.

The Yankees are facing a 16th straight offseason without a World Series title, and there are no easy or inexpensive answers for how the team will escape its competitive rut.

New York’s season ended Wednesday night as the Yankees fell in four games in the American League Division Series to the Blue Jays, with Toronto becoming the first team to clinch a championship series slot across a quadrupleheader of games. 

The Yankees’ defeat marked a disappointing end after a 2024 run to the World Series and then an aggressive offseason that saw the club commit nearly $300 million to reconstruct its roster in the wake of the departure of Juan Soto to the crosstown Mets. Another injection of talent at the trade deadline in July, particularly in the bullpen, was uneven at best. 

“I’m confident we’ll break through, and I have been every year, and I believe in so many of the people in that room,” said manager Aaron Boone. “That hasn’t changed. The fire hasn’t changed. It’s hard to win the World Series. Been chasing it all my life.”

In Yankees history, the ongoing run without a championship now trails only the 18-year period between their 1978 and 1996 titles, and the 1903–22 period in the earliest days of both the franchise and the World Series itself. In addition to the current title gap, pressure is rising to maximize the peak window of star outfielder Aaron Judge, who could win a third Most Valuable Player award next month after another banner season.

Boone, for his part, is not expected to be on the hot seat, and he said, “I’m under contract [for 2026], I don’t expect anything.”

Roster Math

Yankees GM Brian Cashman, conversely, will be under considerable pressure to fix a roster that, despite a $319.2 million luxury-tax payroll that ranked third in Major League Baseball behind the Dodgers and Mets, showed itself ill-equipped for a deep playoff run. 

“For me, personally, [this is] one of the worst constructions of a roster I’ve ever seen,” said Alex Rodriguez, a former Yankee and a current Fox Sports analyst, on the network’s postgame show following the Blue Jays’ clinching win. “You have three left-handed [hitting] catchers, five [designated hitters]. You have a first baseman in and out. It’s just a very difficult hand for Boone, and honestly, they were exposed against a much better Jays team.”

Five of the team’s highest-paid players—Judge, designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton, and starting pitchers Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, and Max Fried—are each locked up through at least 2027, and that quintet of players alone will be paid $147.3 million next year. Overall, the Yankees already have $191 million committed in payroll for next season, before any free agency, arbitration, or option decisions are rendered. Cole is slated to return after missing all of 2025 due to Tommy John surgery. 

The biggest decisions among existing Yankees players will likely be regarding outfielders Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham. Bellinger is expected to opt out of the final year of his contract, which would pay him $25 million next year, and after a resurgent season in 2025, he will command plenty of interest around the league. Grisham, meanwhile, became an everyday starter in center field after arriving in the Soto trade with San Diego in late 2023, and he, too, will command a big increase in free agency from his $5 million salary this year.