With all the buzz surrounding the 2026 NFL offseason – more international game slots, the draft, the roster moves, the contracts – September was supposed to bring the eyes of the world to football like never before. Instead, with Week 1 down in the books, Sports Business Journal’s Austin Karp looked at all the viewership data and slapped the league with a reality check.

“The NFL averaged 19.5 million viewers for its games in Week 1, down 13% from a record 22.3 million last year, when there were no competing Sunday afternoon national windows on CBS and Fox,” Karp wrote in his report. “Two years ago, NFL Week 1 drew 21.5 million viewers. Those three figures mark the three best NFL Week 1 audiences over the last decade, as the league has been able to take advantage of Nielsen measurement changes such as Big Data, improved out-of-home measurement, co-viewing changes and streaming improvements.”

Last season, Fox notably commanded the afternoon window and made the most out of it. But this year, that window was split between CBS and FOX, which could be one of the major reasons for the sharp dip in numbers. The NFL has also branched out to other weekdays on top of its Thursday Night Football – with the season opener between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots held on a Wednesday.

They’ve also handed more games to streaming platforms. For instance, the Los Angeles Rams vs. San Francisco 49ers game was hosted in Australia and streamed on Netflix, which takes a bite out of legacy broadcasting houses. Earlier, Netflix only had two games on its roster – the Christmas Day showdowns. But for the 2026 season, the platform got a five-game package, including the season opener, the holiday games, as well as an additional game near the end of the season.

Add Amazon Prime Video to the mix, and you can see how the standard viewership rates may fluctuate this season. What’s more, the general populace is already tired of having to switch between platforms and paying multiple subscriptions on top of an existing cost of seamless internet.

“It’s not the first inning anymore,” Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill wrote on X recently, taking a swipe at Netflix’s game window. “Putting sports exclusively on streaming has failed. [It] alienates longtime fans without reaching new ones.”

It’s not just about legacy media houses, though. All of these factors have even started to take a swing at alt-casts like The ManningCast.

“The ManningCast on ESPN2 pulled in 705,000 viewers, down 16% from the show last year in Week 1 and the lowest figure for the alt-cast in Week 1 since it began in 2021,” writes Karp.

Despite the decline, 19.5 million viewers (average viewership per game) rank among the strongest Week 1 audiences in NFL history. In fact, the final game of Week 1 – Monday Night Football featuring Denver Broncos vs. Kansas City Chiefs – brought a record 23.2M viewers through ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2.

As the 2026 NFL season picks up steam and the stakes get higher, there is a very good chance these viewership drops become an afterthought and new records are made. But the league also has to ensure consistent football access to the fans to make that a reality – something the league is already having a hard time doing.

There have already been network outages on NFL+ and audio glitches on ESPN. If the league doesn’t address these issues, the fanbase that waited seven months for football to come back won’t let a 13% viewership drop be the end of it.