Mizzou, Chiefs soar to St. Louis television ratings highs over New Year’s weekend: Media Views
It indeed was a happy new year for companies whose business is tied to the St. Louis television ratings for the top two football teams in Missouri.
That’s because the Kansas City Chiefs and Missouri Tigers set season-high ratings marks over the holiday weekend, eclipsing what already had been huge viewership numbers they had been piling up for weeks on end.
TIGER TALK: On Friday night, MU beat Ohio State 14-3 in the Cotton Bowl, a New Year’s Six game with a big payday and the school’s biggest bowl contest in more than half a century. The victory sent the Tigers to 11-2 and completed their best season in a decade.
The contest was shown on ESPN and was seen in 13.6% of the St. Louis market according to Nielsen, which tabulates viewership, to rank fourth nationally. That was behind two Ohio markets (Columbus, 26.3, and Dayton, 19.7) as well as college football hotbed Birmingham, Alabama (13.7). But St. Louis beat out Ohio’s largest market — Cleveland was fifth, at 12.8. And the Gateway City topped Missouri’s other major market — Kansas City was seventh, at 10.9.
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This follows a big local ratings run in November for the Tigers, who finally clawed their way onto nationally prominent networks after spending nearly the first two-thirds of their storybook season on lesser outlets. They had three appearances on CBS (KMOV, Channel 4 locally) that averaged an 11.3 rating, with the top figure being 11.9 for their Black Friday rout of Arkansas that set up their Cotton Bowl bid.
They also made one November appearance on ESPN, and that game drew a 9 rating in St. Louis.
For what it’s worth, the top-rated Cardinals game of 2023 was 10.6, and their local telecasts averaged a 5.6 rating. But the Redbirds play almost every day for six months and had a historically bad season, whereas MU played just once a week and had a storybook year fueled in large part with players from St. Louis.
Although the Cotton Bowl was dull for the first three quarters (the Buckeyes led 3-0 entering the final 15 minutes) and OSU seemed disinterested with several key players sitting out, from kickoff shortly after 7 p.m. until 10 o’clock, the telecast averaged a 13.1 rating locally. Then the final half-hour rose to 15.3.
CHIEFS CHARGE: Sunday was New Year’s Eve, and the Chiefs ended the year with more St. Louis ratings fireworks.
Chiefs on St. Louis television this season
Television ratings for Kansas City Chiefs games in St. Louis so far this season:
| Date | Opponent | Channel | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sept. 7 | vs. Detroit | KSDK (5) | 15.4 |
| Sept. 17 | at Jacksonville | KMOV (4) | 10.8 |
| Sept. 24 | vs. Chicago | KTVI (2) | 13.6 |
| Oct. 1 | at New York Jets | KSDK (5) | 18.9 |
| Oct. 8 | at Minnesota | KMOV (4) | 16.3 |
| Oct. 12 | vs. Denver | Amazon (streaming) | No TV |
| Oct. 22 | vs. Los Angeles Chargers | KMOV (4) | 16.7 |
| Oct. 29 | at Denver | KMOV (4) | 18.4 |
| Nov. 5 | vs. Miami (in Germany) | NFL Network | 8.3 |
| Nov. 20 | vs. Philadelphia | ESPN, ESPN2 | 18.1 |
| Nov. 26 | at Las Vegas | KMOV (4) | 17.8 |
| Dec. 3 | at Green Bay | KSDK (5) | 13.1 |
| Dec. 10 | vs. Buffalo | KMOV (4) | 19.0 |
| Dec. 17 | at New England | KTVI (2) | 13.4 |
| Dec. 25 | vs. Las Vegas | KMOV (4), Nickelodeon | 15.0 |
| Dec. 31 | vs. Cincinnati | KTVI (2) | 19.5 |
| Average | 15.6 |
Their 25-17 victory over Cincinnati was seen in 19.5% of the market, KC’s best St. Louis rating in a year in which they dominated all of television viewership in the market — not just in sports. In fact, that figure for Sunday is believed to be the top rating for a program shown locally since the Super Bowl.
Eight of the Chiefs’ contests were seen in more than 16% of the market, a massive figure in this era of fragmented viewership and cord cutting. Almost astonishingly, five of their games have had a St. Louis rating above 18. That’s in a market in which many people claim they don’t follow the NFL because the league shunned St. Louis, with Rams owner Stan Kroenke blasting the town on the way to Los Angeles.
The Chiefs will be back on St. Louis TV airwaves on Sunday, when they play their regular-season finale. KMOV has that one, at 3:25 p.m. against the Chargers in Los Angeles. That will make it three consecutive years in which all the Chiefs’ games that have been televised have been shown in St. Louis (there was one contest this season and one in 2022 that were exclusively streamed on Amazon, with no “regular” TV coverage).
KC’s only contest in the past four seasons that was televised and not shown locally was its 2020 finale, a meaningless game against the Chargers that was played after the Chiefs already had clinched the top seed for the AFC playoffs. That contest was televised by Fox, and local affiliate KTVI (Channel 2) instead showed the meaningful Green Bay-Chicago matchup.
Football finale: It’s the final weekend of the NFL’s regular season, with a rare double doubleheader of games set to be shown on Sunday afternoon.
Normally, one of the two networks that carry NFL daytime Sunday contests (CBS and Fox) shows two games in each market and the other has one. It is a rotating system. But on opening and closing weeks, each are allowed to double up.
As has become tradition, NBC’s Sunday night closing-week contest is a game with playoff significance — this time Buffalo at Miami. Depending on what happens earlier in the day, the Bills might have to win in order to make the playoffs. The Dolphins have clinched a postseason slot, but a victory in this one would not only give the AFC East title but a No. 2 postseason seed.
NCAA-ESPN deal: ESPN has reached an eight-year agreement to continue to show the NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament, which has been surging in viewership, as well as the exclusive rights to 39 other championships under a $920 million deal announced Thursday.
The arrangement calls for several championship events, including in women’s basketball, to be shown over-the-air on ABC (KDNL, Channel 30 locally). ABC, like ESPN, is owned by The Walt Disney Co.
