Taylor Swift Appearance Give Big Boost to NBC’s Sunday Night Football Ratings

The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce romance has been really good for ratings and NBC’s Sunday Night Football got a big boost from her latest appearance at a Kansas City Chiefs game. The Chiefs’ 23-20 win over the New York Jets in Week 4 scored huge ratings for the network.

This week’s Sunday Night Football drew an average audience of 27 million viewers, which was up 22 percent over the same week in 2022. At its peak (from 9:30 to 9:45 p.m. ET), the game had 29.4 million viewers. NBC claims the audience also included 2 million more women.

NBC also made the following notes:

Compared to an average of the first three weeks of “Sunday Night Football,” the biggest demographic gains were among girls 12 to 17 (53%), women 18 to 24 (24%) and women older than 35 (34%), the network said, citing preliminary Nielsen data.

The game was the most-watched Sunday night programming since Super Bowl LVII in February. NBC now boasts the two most-watched NFL games this year, as the top spot goes to the Sept. 7 NFL Kickoff Game in which the Chiefs faced the Detroit Lions. That game averaged 27.5 million viewers, just eclipsing Sunday night’s contest.

The Taylor Swift effect is real.