CBS had this Bills game as its ‘top request’ to air during the 2024 NFL season

There was no Tony Romo “I don’t know, Jim”-style indecision when CBS was tasked with informing the NFL which games it most wanted to air during the 2024 NFL campaign – the network wanted to be the one to broadcast Buffalo. Bills’ regular season matchup with the Kansas City Chiefs.

The matchups between the Bills and Chiefs have been box office hits in recent years, a testament to the overall quality of each team and their respective quarterbacks. Buffalo and Kansas City have met seven times since the 2020 NFL season: four times in the regular season and three times in the playoffs. The Bills are 3-1 in their season games (winning the last three) while the Chiefs have won all three playoff matchups.

The matches, generally speaking, are hotly contested (the last four ending by one score) and widely watched; The January 2022 AFC Divisional Round between Buffalo and Kansas City averaged 42.7 million viewers and peaked at 51.697 million, according to BuffaloBills.com. These numbers were supplanted by the divisional game which took place in January of this year, with the game becoming the first divisional game in NFL history to average over 50 million viewers, or 50.393 million , according to CBS. It peaked at 56.25 million.

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People clearly want to watch the Bills and Chiefs face off, which is why CBS has made the contest its “top ask” for the 2024 season, according to the AP’s Joe Reedy. All but two of Buffalo’s games against Kansas City this decade were broadcast on CBS; its 2020 regular season game was broadcast on FOX while its 2021 game Sunday Night Football competition broadcast, as planned, on NBC.

“We felt like as the home of the AFC, we should continue to tell this story,” CBS Sports CEO and President David Berson said of broadcasting the AFC matchup. week 11, according to Reedy.

The fact that the game is the network’s “top demand” also sheds some light on why it’s not taking place in a primetime slot; according to Reedy, the 4:25 p.m. slot is the “most watched game of the week.” The NFL granted CBS its request to broadcast the game, and the network is putting the contest in as high-profile a window as possible.

Fireworks on the field and in the audience are sure to be on display when Josh Allen and the Bills host the defending Super Bowl champions in Week 11; we already know that Tony Romo has the date circled on his calendar.