It's perfectly fitting that the greatest weekend in sports history crescendoed the way it did. Twenty-five points scored after the final 2-minute warning. Two quarterbacks, both younger than 27, combining to generate 820 yards, eight touchdowns, and zero turnovers. It was TV you couldn't stop watching if you tried, played by the two most-fervently watched teams in football.
In the final minutes of the Chiefs' 42-36 overtime slaying of the Bills, 90 percent of the TVs turned on in Kansas City and Buffalo were watching the game. (The obvious follow-up: what were the other 10 percent doing?)
Now consider the following: the Super Bowl -- the biggest cultural phenomenon we have in this country -- draws a rating in the mid-to-low 40s. In Kansas City and Buffalo, the average Chiefs or Bills game outdraws that.
That data is courtesy of Sports Business Journal, who on Monday published the local TV data from all 32 teams for the 2021 regular season. On the whole, the league saw a 10 percent jump from 2020 to '21, and 21 of the league's 32 teams were up in local viewership versus last season.
To put this into context, I've interspersed these local TV ratings rankings with the national ratings for other major sporting events. Keep in mind these are average ratings.
1. Buffalo -- 47.16
2. Kansas City -- 45.28
Super Bowl LIV: 41.6
3. Green Bay -- 41.57
4. New Orleans -- 40.89
5. Pittsburgh -- 36.24
6. Cleveland -- 35.19
7. New England -- 31.47
8. Seattle -- 31.41
9. Dallas -- 29.55
10. Minnesota -- 28.89
11. Cincinnati -- 28.85
12. Baltimore -- 27.91
13. Tennessee -- 26.32
14. Denver -- 25.89
15. Philadelphia -- 25.41
16. Indianapolis -- 24.31
2020 NFC Championship: 23.1
17. Chicago -- 22.15
2016 World Series Game 7: 21.8
18. Tampa Bay -- 21.76
19. Detroit -- 20.92
20. Arizona -- 20.87
21. Jacksonville -- 19.67
22. Carolina -- 19.14
23. San Francisco -- 18.69
24. Washington -- 16.64
25. Las Vegas -- 16.22
2016 NBA Finals Game 7: 15.8
2022 CFP National Championship: 15.6
26. Atlanta -- 14.52
27. Houston -- 12.26
28. Miami -- 11.84
2019 March Madness national championship: 11.6
29. LA Rams -- 10.52
30. LA Chargers -- 8.49
31. NY Giants -- 8.39
2019 Academy Awards: 7.7
32. NY Jets -- 7.12
New York and Los Angeles occupy the final four spots, seemingly indifferent to football (or at least to their local teams) compared to the rest of the country. But even in NYC and LA, where they follow the entertainment business like they follow the NFL in Kansas City and Buffalo, the local teams out-rate the Oscars -- the Super Bowl of Showbiz -- nationally.
Well, all the local teams except the Jets.