The NFL season is over, and with any talk of a Kansas City conspiracy now over, it’s time to look back at the 2024 season for the league and its media partners.

You can compare this to last year’s edition and the previous year’s, which had quite a few winners and losers.

This season saw lower viewership than 2023-24’s record numbers, but the NFL’s dominance on TV is not ending. This means that people still want to watch football, whether on traditional terrestrial television or streaming services. Viewers are finding the National Football League, and that matters to the Shield, Commissioner Roger Goodell, and the league’s owners.

The 2024-25 season included an election, but it did not significantly impact the NFL’s overall numbers.

Let’s take a look at this season’s winners and losers:

AMAZON

Viewers are now used to watching football on Amazon’s Prime Video service. In its third year in streaming Thursday Night Football, Amazon was rewarded with its best numbers to date. Seeing an average viewership of 13.20 million in 2024 compared to 11.86 million for the previous season, an 11 percent increase, Prime Video said TNF’s numbers were the best in the 19-year history of the TNF package.

In addition, Amazon streamed its first-ever NFL Wild Card Playoff game in January, garnering an average audience of 22.1 million viewers. And during Super Bowl week, it was reported that Amazon would get to keep the Wild Card game for two more seasons, however, Sports Business Journal noted the National Football League extended the contract to the full term of the NFL media deal which is set to expire in 2032.

And rival networks execs are a bit jealous perceiving that the NFL is now slanting in favor of Amazon. While it certainly sounds like sour grapes, Amazon’s rise among the traditional NFL partners of CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox, and NBC certainly gives the traditional networks some food for thought for the next media contract, which could come as soon as 2029 if the NFL decides to opt-out.

CBS

For the second straight season, CBS’s American Football Conference package had more viewers than Fox’s NFC package. CBS saw an average of 19.2 million viewers over Fox’s 18.2. In the all-important 4:25 p.m. ET timeslot, which has the highest viewership of all of the NFL’s windows, CBS also won that over Fox, 24.3 million to 23.9 million.

Normally, the NFC package wins over the AFC package due to the larger media markets that are located in the NFC. However, thanks to the star power of the AFC’s quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Joe Burrow, plus the cross-flexing of selected NFC games to CBS, the Tiffany Network has seen higher numbers for the last two seasons.

And with CBS airing the AFC Championship in the late Sunday slot on Conference Championship Sunday, that led to a record viewership.

CBS will go for a ratings threepeat in 2025.

AL MICHAELS

After losing out on the opportunity to call one of three NBC’s Wild Card games in January 2024, he was back in the postseason last month. And with an improved Thursday Night Football schedule, the man who has called the most NFL primetime games appeared to be having fun again after being criticized for dull or uninterested calls the previous two seasons.

Al is considering returning for the 2025 season, but he’s not inclined to leave just yet. With Amazon owning the rights to a Wild Card playoff game for the foreseeable future, Al knows that he’ll call a postseason game for as long as Amazon wants him. Al has earned the right to call when he wants to leave.

NETFLIX

Netflix carved out a niche for itself by signing a three-year contract to stream Christmas Day NFL games,, which began last December. Viewers got nervous about the service’s ability to handle the traffic after a bad buffering performance for the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight in November. However, Netflix righted the ship for Christmas Day and was able to attract a combined audience of 65 million for its two games.

Thanks to the NFL audience, Netflix saw its best viewership month in two years.

With the NFL looking for more media revenue streams, especially for a proposed 16-game international package down the road, look for a potential Netflix bid.

TOM BRADY

Expectations for Tom Brady were mixed entering this season. Two years ago, he signed that famous 10-year, $375 million contract and then took a year off. This led to a very mixed bag for the seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback. While he came into this season with excellent credentials, he had never called a game and was instantly paired with top NFL on Fox play-by-play man Kevin Burkhardt.

Brady got off to a really slow start, with former players, including Skip Bayless, noting that he wasn’t top-grade material. While his performance throughout the regular season was rather sluggish, that didn’t prevent Awful Announcing from giving him our Awfulie for 2024 as Sports Media Person of the Year.

There was also the conflict of interest as the part-owner of the Las Vegas Raiders and the restrictions the NFL placed on Brady, not allowing him to attend practices or go to pre-production meetings, which Fox says does not hamper his preparation for the games.

He did save his best work for the playoffs, however, in the Super Bowl, he wasn’t on Greg Olsen level, the man he replaced. Brady’s agent has said his client is coming back next season and finishing his ten-year contract as well. As we say in the business, we shall see.

GREG OLSEN

After two seasons of great work, Greg Olsen was paired with Joe Davis on Fox’s “B” team and made a great first impression. However, if there was any thought that Olsen could move to another network like NBC to become its top analyst for Sunday Night Football, that was immediately dashed when the network signed Cris Collinsworth through the end of the decade.

While Olsen got a taste of what it was like to be an “A” analyst for two seasons with Kevin Burkhardt while keeping his seat warm for Brady, he’s now seemingly stuck as the NFL on Fox’s “B” analyst. With a log jam at the top with Tony Romo at CBS, Troy Aikman at ESPN/ABC, Collinsworth, and Brady, it may take a newly-minted full-season international package for Olsen to get back to the “A” position.

Netflix tapped Olsen for one of its Christmas Day games and may use him again next season. He’s like the “A” analyst-in-exile who hopes to get his shot.

NBC SPORTS/PEACOCK

We would have stopped with Brady and Olsen in this category had NBC Sports Public Relations not decided to create one of the most bizarre social media posts right after Super Bowl LIX. Yes, Peacock streamed Philadelphia’s season-opening game against the Green Bay Packers in Brazil on September 6, 2024.

“Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles on their Second Super Bowl Victory and the First-Ever NFL Championship Win by a Team that Began the Season with a Game Available Nationally Exclusively on a Streaming Service.”

Seriously? Make that about your own company rather than the team? It’s very strange to see that, but then again, in this day of social media, nothing should surprise us.

So there you have it, our winners and losers for the 2024-25 season. Once again, we had a lot to chew on from the media, and we’ll likely have more in the new season once September starts.