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- Mar 19, 2019
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The game ultimately wasn’t as exciting as it could have been, given the early exit of Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz with a concussion. Still, the wild-card game between Seattle and Philadelphia, broadcast by NBC, generated the largest audience of any TV show since Super Bowl LIII.
Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Daily, an average audience of 35.8 million tuned in for the Seahawks-Eagles game. It was a slight drop from last year’s audience of 35.9 million for Eagles-Bears, which captured the much larger Chicago market and entailed a much more exciting game.
The Vikings-Saints game on FOX generated an audience of 29.9 million, a sharp increase over the 25.4 million who watched Chargers-Ravens in the early game from last year’s wild-card Sunday.
For the weekend, the games averaged 30.5 million viewers, a seven-percent bump over last year and the largest total audience in four years.
It will be interesting to see how the ratings perform the rest of the way, given the absence of big-market teams in New York, L.A., and Chicago, and national brands like the Cowboys, Steelers, and Patriots not qualifying for the round of eight.