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NFL NFL Season is Underway In an increasingly polarized and tribalized world, the idea that 30 million Americans would still gather communally for something is a welcome miracle in many ways. That miracle is called the NFL. Media industry sources told The Athletic that Fox is projecting around 30 million viewers will watch the Philadelphia Eagles-Kansas City Chiefs game at 4: 25 p. m. (ET) Sunday, one of the most-anticipated Week 2 games in recent NFL history. Advertisement The game is the 11th rematch of a Super Bowl in the following season in NFL history — and just the fourth to occur within the first two weeks of that season (the Super Bowl winning team has won seven of the 10 previous rematches). Thirty million viewers would be the best Week 2 performance on record (since 1988, when the NFL started tracking TV ratings full-time). The current high for a Week 2 game since 1988 is last year’s CBS national game featuring Bengals vs. Chiefs (27. 87 million viewers). The most-watched September game ever? In 1993, 31. 1 million people watched Dallas-Washington on “Monday Night Football. ” The game could not be set up better for television purposes. The CBS competition in the window features cities outside the top 10 media markets (Denver Broncos versus Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers versus Arizona Cardinals), with no other Fox games scheduled. I think 30 million viewers could even be a touch low as a projection if the game is close, especially given that we are in a new data era of Nielsen, where sports viewership is increasing, based on new research methodology. As Sports Media Watch’s Jon Lewis noted in this excellent piece, television viewership is now in a state of flux. The last time these two teams met was Super Bowl LIX, which was won by the Eagles 40-22 and drew a record 127. 7 million U. S. viewers across Fox, Fox Deportes, Telemundo, Tubi and the NFL’s digital platforms. “For me, it brings to mind a different sport, NASCAR, where every year we would start with the Daytona 500. Boom, right out of the box, you’ve got the biggest event of the year, ” said Richie Zyontz, who will produce the game for Fox. “To my memory, nothing this big for us has ever happened this early in the season. “Truth be spoken, it would be great if it was cold and it was November or December, but it certainly gets us to shake out the cob webs early in the season and really sharpen up for what should be a great game. ” Advertisement That this game is happening in Week 2 is not an accident. The NFL always wants to tell a compelling viewership story, and front-loading the schedule provides an opportunity to do so. As Fox Sports president of insights and analytics, Mike Mulvihill, told The Athletic in May: “They are really trying to get all the partners off to a really positive start. We’ve got the Super Bowl rematch in Week 2. Last year, we had it in Week 7. They’re using a Dallas-Philly game as the season opener. They’re using the Chiefs for the You Tube game on the first Friday. The Sunday night opener (on NBC) is Baltimore-Buffalo. “That’s using a lot of top games very early. I think what they’re doing is they’re taking advantage of the fact that there are some changes in the Nielsen ratings this year that are going to give everybody a little bit of a lift. By Week 2 or 3, we should all be out there telling really positive stories. ” Fox is unsurprisingly giving the game a playoff feel in terms of shoulder programming. As you have seen on Netflix, one of the goals in sports broadcasting is to “event-ize” as much as possible. In this spirit, “Fox NFL Sunday “will hold its first-ever regular-season two-hour pregame show. The pregame group will be on-site, broadcasting from sets at both the Kansas City Power & Light District and from GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. Fox said it expects a crowd of about 3, 000 to watch the show live. Rich Russo, Fox’s director for Sunday’s broadcast, said there will be some extra production equipment for the game, but nothing like the camera armada they would have for the postseason. He said he likes directing at Arrowhead Stadium because it has a college stadium feel. “The seats are close to the field and you get the sea of red, ” Russo said. “It’s an electric crowd. We haven’t done a lot of Kansas City games at home, but whenever we were able to do those games, we really loved the stadium. It looks good on television. ” Advertisement Zyontz said the benefit of a broadcast team doing teams as frequently as Fox has had the Eagles is that you learn certain tendencies and personalities of players. “The game is going to happen regardless of how well you know the team, ” Zyontz said. “It may not help your coverage, but there might be some certain players that you know do certain things or have certain emotions, like we saw (Eagles wideout) A. J. Brown reading a book last year. It does give you a certain comfort having done the teams. Sometimes when you get a team that you haven’t seen, it’s a little more ramping up just to get comfortable with them. ” For sports media nerds interested in viewership, the record for the most-watched NFL regular-season game won’t be topped here, although that could happen this Thanksgiving with the Dallas Cowboys hosting the Chiefs at 4: 30 p. m. ET on CBS. However, it will be interesting to see if this game enters the same airspace as the top 10 (which is listed below, courtesy of the NFL). The chart below dates back to 1988 (as far as NFL records go back) and, not surprisingly, eight of the top 10 are on Thanksgiving, with the other two later in the season. 1. 42. 1 million: Giants-Cowboys (Fox, 11/24/22, Week 12, Thanksgiving) 2. 41. 9M: Commanders-Cowboys (CBS, 11/23/23, Week 12, Thanksgiving) 3. 41. 5M: Giants-49ers (ABC, 12/3/90, Week 13, Monday) 4. 41. 3M: Raiders-Cowboys (CBS, 11/25/21, Week 12, Thanksgiving) 5. 38. 8M: Giants-Cowboys (Fox, 11/28/24, Week 13, Thanksgiving) 6. 38. 4M: Dolphins-Cowboys (NBC, 11/25/93, Week 13, Thanksgiving) 7. 37. 5M: Bears-Lions (CBS, 11/28/24, Week 13, Thanksgiving) 8. 35. 7M: Chiefs-Cowboys (NBC, 11/23/95, Week 13, Thanksgiving) 9. 35. 1M: [Commanders]-Cowboys (Fox, 11/24/2016, Week 12, Thanksgiving) 10. 33. 8M: Patriots-Colts (CBS, 11/4/07, Week 9, Sunday) Advertisement The Eagles’ most-watched regular-season game ever? A 1992 Monday Night Football game against the Cowboys that drew 33 million. For the Chiefs, their most-watched regular-season game ever was Thanksgiving 1995, when they played the Cowboys and 35. 7 million people tuned in. When evaluating potential regular-season viewership for the Chiefs-Eagles meeting, we can look to recent history of a previous match-up between them. The last time the Eagles and Chiefs played in the regular season came on Nov. 20, 2023. That game was a Super Bowl rematch on “Monday Night Football. ” Philadelphia’s 21-17 win over the Chiefs drew 29. 02 million viewers across all platforms, the most for a Monday telecast in 27 years (it remains the most-watched Monday game in the ESPN era, which began in 2006). Before the game, broadcaster Joe Buck said it was the biggest regular-season game he and his partner, Troy Aikman, had been assigned in their then 22 years of calling NFL games together. Zyontz reached out after our first interview to note that for Week 2 in 1994, Fox aired the Chiefs (featuring Joe Montana) and the San Francisco 49ers (featuring Steve Young) with Pat Summerall and John Madden on the call. “Boy, does this ever have the feeling of a big game, ” Summerall said in his game intro. “I’m Pat Summerall, here with John Madden. It’s hard to say ‘big game, ’ just the second week of the year. But this is. ” (For the record: 49ers-Chiefs in Week 2 in 1994 was part of a single window on Fox and drew 18. 3 million viewers. There were at least three other matchups in that window, so viewership was split among multiple games, making 18. 3 million viewers all the more impressive. ) (Photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Richard Deitsch is a media reporter for The Athletic. He previously worked for 20 years for Sports Illustrated, where he covered seven Olympic Games, multiple NCAA championships and U. S. Open tennis. Richard also hosts a weekly sports media podcast. Follow Richard on Twitter @richarddeitsch