Sunday’s game at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Ravens was the most-watched AFC championship game ever, setting a new ratings record of more than 55 million average viewers, according to CBS.
The game, in which the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Ravens 17-10, was broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount Plus.
In a news release Tuesday, CBS said that 55.47 million viewers watched the game — a number 1.1% greater than the previous record for an AFC championship audience set in 2011 when 54.85 million football fans watched the New York Jets defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The audience for Sunday’s game was 17% higher than it was for the comparable window for the 2023 AFC Championship between the Philadelphia Eagles and the San Francisco 49ers on Jan. 29, 2023, according to the news release.
In addition, peak viewership — defined as the maximum number of viewers who tuned in at any time — exceeded more than 64 million viewers.
Sunday’s game was “the most-watched non-Super Bowl program on CBS in 30 years” the release said. The last time the network had such a large audience was during primetime viewing near the end of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, on Feb. 25, 1994.
Taylor Swift, who attended Sunday’s game in Baltimore, has been widely credited with lifting NFL ratings during the regular season. Some have called it the “Taylor Swift Effect.”
The game between the Chiefs and the Chicago Bears that Swift attended on Sept. 24, when she and Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Chiefs, debuted their relationship, scored the highest viewership ratings of the week for women ages 12-49, according to Fox Sports.
A Sunday night game Swift attended on Oct. 1, where the Chiefs took on the New York Jets, was the most-watched Sunday show since Super Bowl 57, according to NBC Sports. The audience averaged 27 million viewers.
Super Bowl 58 takes place in Las Vegas on Feb. 11. Swift will be performing a sold-out show in Tokyo on Feb. 10 and the pop star’s fans, as well as some football fans, have been busy calculating her ability to make it to the game in time for kick-off.