NFL Is the Biggest Thing on TV — and It Is on the Internet, Too

• The internet is rapidly destroying TV because it gives people more ways to spend their time, for less money.
• Except! The thing that commands the most live attention on the internet is the same thing that commands the most attention on TV.
• Yup: NFL games.

Two things can be true at the same time:

• The internet has atomized the way we absorb information, entertainment, and culture. Which means we all exist in our own bubbles of interest and affiliation.
• The internet is very good at showing lots of people the same thing lots of people used to consume before the internet existed. Which means we’re all still watching the same things we used to watch on TV — we’re just getting it through broadband pipes.

Here’s evidence for the second thing: A list of the top live internet events, ranked by broadband traffic, for the last three months of 2024. If you’d like to see a non-screenshot version, download this report from AppLogic Networks, a broadband infrastructure company.

As you can see, the fifth entry on the chart is Netflix’s Jake Paul v Mike Tyson kinda-fight — the kind of stunt programming that used to run on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. (See: Knievel, Evel.) And the remaining nine events are all NFL games, streamed by Amazon, or ESPN, or Peacock.

That is: NFL games — basically the only thing that draws big numbers of viewers on TV anymore — are also basically the only thing that draws big numbers of internet viewers. At least when it comes to live, concurrent viewing.

As anyone who works in the TV business can tell you, that doesn’t mean you can simply port TV shows over to the internet and get the same viewership, or money, that the traditional TV infrastructure used to deliver. It’s much more complicated than that.

But it does seem to mean that TV’s biggest live draw is also the internet’s biggest live draw.