On the Monday following last year’s AFC Championship Game, another memorable chapter in what has been an epic rivalry between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills, CBS Sports president David Berson and two lieutenants, executive vice president of programming Dan Weinberg and senior director of programming Kelly Wood, held a Zoom meeting with members of the NFL’s broadcasting department.
The media companies that air NFL games have an ongoing dialogue with the league when it comes to schedule requests, but this was CBS’ first chance to pitch the league’s top media officials on the game they wanted most for the 2025 NFL regular season.
You don’t need Scotland Yard to figure out the game Berson and Co. desired above all:
“The Bills-Chiefs game was our number one request,” Berson said this week. “There were other games equally compelling, including the rematch of the Super Bowl [a Week 2 rematch between the Chiefs and Eagles on Fox that earned a staggering audience total of 33.8 million viewers]. But we’re the home of the AFC. We have been telling this story, and we wanted to continue telling this story. It is the NFL’s best current rivalry. It’s one of one. It’s this generation’s Brady-Manning, and we have taken pride in showing it.”
During the Josh Allen-Patrick Mahomes era, which began in 2020 when Allen was selected by Buffalo, the CBS Sports crew of Jim Nantz, Tony Romo and Tracy Wolfson has called seven of the nine Bills-Chiefs meetings, including the last six games. The network has broadcast all four playoff meetings, all won by Kansas City.
These have not been ordinary games as far as television viewership. Last year’s AFC Championship Game averaged 57.7 million viewers, the most-watched AFC Championship Game on record. Excluding Super Bowls, it was the second most-watched NFL game ever (tracking started in 1988), behind only the 2010 NFC Championship Game between the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints. which averaged 57.9 million viewers.
The Bills-Chiefs game has defined CBS’ NFL coverage in many ways, given the audience for it and the quality of the games. So you can understand why Berson was thrilled to learn from NFL media executives Hans Schroeder and Mike North on a 9 a.m. Zoom meeting with the league on May 14, the day of the NFL schedule release, that CBS had been granted its No. 1 pick.
The Chiefs-Bills will air this Sunday on CBS at 4:25 p.m and most importantly, it will go to 100 percent of the country as a standalone game in the late-afternoon window. CBS is treating the game like an event — “The NFL Today” studio show will travel to Buffalo, and they’ve added an extra low end-zone camera as part of a 40-camera allotment, between manned cameras and cameras that are in the pylons on the goal line.
When the teams played last year in the regular season — a 30-21 Buffalo win over the previously undefeated Chiefs — the game averaged 31.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched non-Thanksgiving Day game of the 2024 regular season. If you exclude Thanksgiving and Christmas Day games, last year’s Bills-Chiefs regular season game was the NFL’s most-watched regular-season game since CBS’ Patriots-Colts Week 9 in 2007 (33.8 million), per SBJ.
Berson said early November was perfect for the game because both the Chiefs and Bills have already played a significant number of games. CBS will also benefit from the end of Daylight Savings Time (remember: turn your clocks BACK this weekend) as more people will be home watching as evenings get darker.
“It’s two megastars, both likeable, and two fan bases with tremendously rabid fans who care a ton,” said Berson, who will attend the game. “They’ve played so frequently in both the regular season and postseason and had classic game after classic game.”
One significant value for CBS is that the Nantz-Romo-Wolfson crew have done so many games involving the two teams that the production meetings have provided valuable insight for the broadcast.
“Jim and Tony really have a good relationship with both quarterbacks,” CBS Sports producer Jim Rikhoff told The Athletic earlier this year. “There is mutual respect there because we’ve done so many games with them. They know we’ve never burned them from something they told us in a meeting not to be revealed before the game. We would never reveal anything early until we went on the air. I think they know our crew has a very high credibility standard there and that builds trust, and you get more information because of that.”
The most memorable game CBS has aired between the two teams was the 2021 AFC divisional playoffs, known informally as “13 Seconds.”
There were four lead changes and 25 points scored in the last two minutes of regulation. With only 13 seconds left to play, Mahomes led the Chiefs on a 44-yard drive to set up a game-tying field goal by Harrison Butker to force overtime. In the extra session, the Chiefs won the coin-toss, leaving Allen to stand on the sidelines watching as Mahomes led the Chiefs down the field, ultimately hitting Travis Kelce in the corner of the end zone from eight yards out to lift the Chiefs to an epic 42-36 victory.
That game averaged 42.7 million viewers on CBS and peaked at 51.7 million viewers. At the time, it was the most-watched divisional playoff game on any network in five years, since Green Bay-Dallas in 2017.
The success of the two franchises since 2018 has been extraordinary. The Chiefs have the best record in the NFL during that stretch at 95-29. The Bills are No. 2 at 82-40. Berson pointed out, thanks to help from Rikhoff’s group, that the Chiefs are the only team in NFL history to beat another four times in the postseason over a five-year span and that the two teams after Sunday will have played 10 times since 2020, the most between any non-divisional opponents. Of the 25 teams that Mahomes has faced, the Bills are the only team to beat him four times.
No matter the result of Sunday’s game, it’s clear CBS is going to be the winner. I’d say it’s even money that Sunday’s game or Fox’s Week 2 game between the Eagles and Chiefs will be the most-watched regular season game, excluding the Thanksgiving Day ones.