NFL Playoffs Crush Emmys, Iowa Caucuses In Ratings

Monday night’s television lineup was chock full of competitions — the Iowa caucuses, the Emmys and an NFL playoff game. But when it came to viewership, there was a clear winner: Football ruled the night.

Some 28.6 million viewers tuned in to watch the the Tampa Bay Buccaneers triumph over the Philadelphia Eagles 32-9, making Monday’s match ESPN’s second most-watched NFL playoff game in history. The Buccaneers now advance to the divisional round against the Detroit Lions on Sunday.

Viewership of coverage of the Iowa caucuses paled in comparison, with an average of 4.67 million viewers across Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, according to Nielsen ratings numbers obtained by Deadline. That total is around half the viewership the caucuses raked in during the 2020 election season.

That’s probably because there wasn’t much of a competition to watchin Iowa, where former President Donald Trump’s victory over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley had long been a foregone conclusion. Trump finished with 51% support from GOP voters ― about the same as what polls predicted in the days leading up to the caucuses. Despite being under four separate criminal indictments, Trump coasted to victory in 98 of Iowa’s 99 counties and triumphed among nearly every demographic.

That left Haley and DeSantis competing for a distant second place, with the latter eking out the former by around 2 percentage points. After a meager showing Monday night, Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out and endorsed Trump.

But the real loser of the night was the 75th annual Emmy Awards, which just 4.3 million people tuned into. That’s an all-time low for the ceremony, down 27% from the previous low of 5.92 million