Thanks to a shocking ending in Seattle and a dominant performance in New England, the NFL wrapped up its conference championships on Sunday with equally dominant ratings for Fox and CBS.
According to Nielsen, 49.8 million viewers tuned into Fox to witness Seattle’s wild overtime win over the Green Bay Packers, 28-22, in the NFC championship.
Those numbers make the game the most-watched program on American television since Super Bowl XLVIII last year.
The game’s madcap final minutes — agonizing for Packers fans, energizing for Seahawks fans — helped its audience peak at 60.5 million viewers as it went into overtime.
Later in the day, over on CBS, 42.1 million viewers watched a more subdued AFC championship as the New England Patriots decimated the Indianapolis Colts 45-7.
The strong ratings for CBS came just hours after the network announced it would once again be the home for Thursday Night Football in 2015.
Overall, this weekend’s conference championships averaged 46.1 million viewers.
While a big ratings hit for Fox, the Seahawks’s game also had an incredible social presence online.
Fans on social media followed along, almost dumbstruck, as the Seahawks somehow, someway erased a sixteen point halftime deficit to defeat the Packers.
“Based on my Twitter feed, this game should get a Nielsen rating of ‘everyone,'” tweeted Brent Weinstein, head of digital media at United Talent Agency.
While the audience wasn’t everyone, the NFC Championship did result in 358 million Twitter impressions.
The last minute heroics of Seattle are a great example of why the league’s games have to be watched live, which is a rarity in today’s delayed TV viewing world.
Yet, the biggest broadcast of all is still to come as the Seahawks take on the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX on NBC on February 1.
