Sunday’s Chiefs-Bills game didn’t set a new viewership standard for the 2025 National Football League season, but came fairly close.

CBS said late Tuesday that it averaged 30.8 million viewers Sunday for its coverage of the Kansas City-Buffalo matchup, ranking as the second-most-watched game of the season thus far. The only NFL contest to draw a bigger audience was Fox’s average draw of 33.8 million viewers in Week 2 for a Super Bowl LIX rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs.

The audience total from Sunday wasn’t a surprise. The Chiefs and Bills have waged what is arguably the NFL’s best rivalry this decade, fueled in part by epic playoff battles in four of the last five seasons, as well as several more in recent years in the regular season. 

CBS also buttressed its coverage significantly, showing the late-afternoon Sunday broadcast to 100% of the country while also bringing its pregame show, The NFL Today, to Highmark Stadium to broadcast live from there.

In addition to claiming the second-highest slot among NFL games this season, the Chiefs-Bills broadcast was also the network’s most-watched Week 9 NFL game since 2007, and was the most-watched program of the week on any network, even beating Fox’s coverage of the World Series. For the season, CBS is averaging 19.4 million viewers per game for its NFL coverage, up 6% from last year and its best season so far since 1998. 

The Bills defeated the Chiefs by a 28–21 score, but both teams are still looking up at several other competitors in the American Football Conference playoff chase, including the Colts, Broncos, and Patriots. 

An upcoming Thanksgiving clash on CBS between the Chiefs and Cowboys—involving two of the league’s most-watched teams in a massive broadcast window—will quite likely top all other games this season, and perhaps set a new mark as the NFL’s most-watched game ever in the regular season.

The latest major sports event to be disrupted by the ongoing Disney–YouTube TV carriage dispute was Tuesday’s debut College Football Playoff rankings reveal show of the 2025 season.

An exclusive live ESPN broadcast at 8 p.m. ET, the program was unavailable for YouTube TV’s estimated 10 million subscribers. (Not to mention ABC’s popular telecast of Dancing With The Stars at the same time.)

More than 20 Disney channels, including all ESPN networks, have been dark on the No. 4 U.S. pay-TV distributor since midnight on Friday, after the two sides failed to reach a new deal. Since then, ABC and ESPN’s full slate of college football and the Cardinals-Cowboys Monday Night Football broadcast have been unavailable on YouTube TV.

Last season, ESPN’s live CFP rankings show drew more than 1 million viewers in primetime on multiple occasions. Interest in the CFP rankings has grown as the postseason bracket expanded from four to 12 teams last year, and is now shifting its seeding structure this year.

Schedule Dynamics

Should Disney and YouTube TV fail to reach an agreement by this weekend, the following major college football games, among others, will be unavailable on the streamer:

• Tulane at Memphis (ESPN)
• No. 5 Georgia at Mississippi State (ESPN)
• No. 7 BYU at No. 8 Texas Tech (ABC)
• No. 3 Texas A&M at No. 22 Missouri (ABC)
• LSU at No. 4 Alabama (USC)

On Monday, ABC and ESPN are set to simulcast the Eagles-Packers matchup that features the first-place teams in the NFC East and North divisions, respectively. ESPN has national NBA broadcasts on Wednesday and Saturday.

The last of the World Series viewership figures from the U.S. is in, and it’s historically big. 

Fox said late Tuesday that it averaged 27.3 million viewers in the U.S. for the dramatic, 11-inning Game 7 between the Dodgers and Blue Jays, one in which Los Angeles became the first repeat Major League Baseball champion in 25 years. The figure represents the most-watched World Series game since Game 7 of the 2017 World Series.

This is a final audience figure incorporating Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement process. A preliminary fast national figure of 25.98 million for Game 7, released early Monday, conveyed a similarly strong sentiment, with the Big Data + Panel methodology ultimately delivering a slight boost. 

With the final figure in hand, Fox averaged 15.7 million viewers for the entire seven-game World Series, essentially on par with last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup despite the loss of a second Nielsen-rated U.S. home market in the 2025 matchup.

The audience for this year’s Game 7, meanwhile, was also coupled with the massive viewership in Canada. That situation north of the border was led by Game 7 viewership on Sportsnet that became the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country outside of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. 

Combining the English-language broadcasts in the U.S. and Canada on Fox and Sportsnet, Game 7 averaged a whopping 38.2 million viewers. 

A Very Big Year for Baseball

The Fox figures from the World Series also placed a significant coda on what has been a highly successful year for MLB on multiple fronts. Even amid darkening clouds on the labor front between owners and players, the league’s 2025 has included:

• A third-straight annual increase in attendance
• Across-the-board boosts among national television rights holders
• Record-setting viewership in the wild-card playoff round
• Strong audience lifts in the division series and league championship series

Japanese viewership for the World Series—which started off big due in part to the presence of Dodgers stars Shohei Ohtani, Roki Sasaki, and Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto—is expected in full on Wednesday. 

College basketball is entering what could be the final season before March Madness expands, despite significant fan opposition to the potential move.

After significant conversations this summer about adding four or eight teams to the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments this season, college leaders opted to remain at 68 teams for 2026, but are still not ruling out future growth.

NCAA SVP of basketball Dan Gavitt in August said that the Division I men’s and women’s basketball committees “will continue conversations on whether to recommend expanding to 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2027 championships.”

This week, Gavitt cited the expansion of the College Football Playoff and the recent expansion of postseasons in professional leagues as one reason March Madness could follow suit. 

“In some cases, it’s been really positive for the sport. In others, you could argue it may or may not have been,” he said on the Inside College Basketball Now podcast. “But I think that environment encouraged a more diligent process to seriously consider whether or not to expand the basketball championships. That process is still ongoing.
There’s no decision that’s been made, nor is there one that’s imminent. … In 2027 or beyond, it could still grow modestly. Time will tell if it indeed comes to that.”

Money Matters

NCAA president Charlie Baker in May said there had been “good conversations” with men’s March Madness media rights holders CBS Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery about expansion. 

The NCAA would likely want additional money for adding games, although sources told Front Office Sports they didn’t expect CBS and WBD to be willing to pay much more than they already are in their current $1 billion annual deal through 2032.

The terms of the NCAA’s media contract with Disney for the women’s tournament stipulate that ESPN is not required to pay extra if women’s March Madness expands.