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On Sunday morning, as the Buffalo Bills prepare to face off against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the unfamiliar confines of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Londoners will get their first taste of the table-demolishing frenzy that sets the nominal “home” team’s fan base apart from all the rest. Back in Erie County, the Bills Mafia soldiers who weren’t able to make the trip will be hunkered down in front of their TV sets—as is usually the run of things.
While the U.K. road trip should keep much of Buffalo’s folding-table stock safe from the standard Sunday tailgating onslaught, football’s most rabid rooters are likely to do some damage to area Nielsen meters. Through the first four weeks of the NFL season, Buffalo remains the league’s top-performing local market, with the Bills averaging a 43.9 rating on the CBS affiliate WIVB-TV and the ABC station WKBW-TV, which simulcast the team’s Monday night opener against the Jets on Sept. 11.
If the capsaicin-hot Bills are to reprise their year-ago ratings win—in 2022, the team averaged a 44.8 rating, with 77% of all TV sets in use in the home market tuning in—they’ll have to keep the Kansas City Chiefs at bay. At present, just two-tenths of a ratings point separates Buffalo from the defending Super Bowl champs, which on Sunday night posted a season-high 47.8 rating in their narrow win over the Jets.
Because of the size difference between the Buffalo and Kansas City markets, the razor-thin margin between the local ratings tallies for the Bills and Chiefs isn’t reflected in the overall head count. (Ratings, after all, represent the percentage of the Nielsen panel that watches a given program, rather than the total number of homes reached.) The nation’s 33rd-largest DMA, Kansas City is home to 1.02 million TV households, while No. 54 Buffalo is relatively tiny, serving a base of 632,110 TV homes. As such, the average number of K.C.-area households watching the Chiefs (446,000 per game) is larger than the analogous figure in Buffalo (277,000).
In terms of share, both markets are running head-to-head, with 83% of all TVs in use in Buffalo and Kansas City locked in to the respective local teams. When sorted by that metric, the next most-loyal group of fans is in New Orleans, where 72% of the TVs in use serve as delivery systems for Saints games. (For a sense of scale, if either of the NFL’s New York City reps were to match the Buffalo/K.C. shares, that would translate to 6.41 million homes.)
Smaller markets have always been the lifeblood of the NFL, as fans in these areas tend to be more devoted to keeping up with their local teams. Perhaps nowhere is that principle best embodied than in the AFC North, where the Steelers, Bengals and Browns now stand as the fourth-, sixth- and seventh-highest-rated teams in the league, respectively. Despite enduring various disappointments on the field, all three rivals can lay claim to a 70% local market share. (Imagine how much better Pittsburgh affiliates would fare if the Steelers had something resembling an offense.)
For what it’s worth, fans in the lone AFC North market that isn’t among the NFL’s top 10 local draws are likely distracted by their baseball team’s remarkable run. The Baltimore Orioles are in the American League Division Series for the first time since 2014, with Game 1 against the Texas Rangers set for Saturday. The Birds are the top priority in Charm City; as such, the 3-1 Ravens may be looking at another few weeks of second-banana status.
If the Bills and Chiefs continue to duel for the local ratings crown, the team with the greatest overall reach hails from big-market Philly. On average, Eagles games have been viewed in nearly 840,000 local households each week, which works out to 27% of Philadelphia’s overall TV base (3.11 million homes). Other major-market franchises that are putting up big numbers on the home front include the Dallas Cowboys (779,000 homes per game) and the future NFC North champs in Detroit (505,000).
As far as overall household deliveries is concerned, nobody can lay a glove on the New York Jets. While fans’ Super Bowl dreams were dashed when Aaron Rodgers was lost for the season four plays into his tenure, Gang Green is making the most of a stingy defense and the nation’s largest built-in media base. Since the season began, the Jets are the only NFL team to break the 1 million-household mark in the home DMA, and they’ve managed it twice. Sunday night’s near-win against the Chiefs scared up a whopping 1.13 million viewers via the flagship station WNBC, while their overtime victory over Buffalo in the season opener delivered 1.06 million viewers across WABC and ESPN.
All told, the Jets are averaging an NFL-best 910,000 homes per game in NYC, putting their NFC roommates to shame. (The luckless Giants are getting by on 717,000 local households per game, although that’s still good for fourth place.) And while the Jets enjoy the advantage of being situated in a market that includes 7.73 million TV households, the local ratings figures suggest that the team’s popularity is no fluke.
Since that fateful outing against the Bills last month, the Jets are averaging an 11.8 rating, good for a 69% improvement compared to last year’s lethargic 7.0. Rodgers may be confined to a walking boot, but the Jets’ D—and what amounted to a career outing for the much-maligned Zach Wilson against Kansas City—has kept hope alive in New York. When the Jets suit up for a game, 32.9% of the TV homes in use in Gotham are trained on Robert Saleh’s crew. Last season, the Jets were lucky to reach one-fifth of those homes.