There’s a vocal faction of ºüÀêÊÓƵans who despise the Chiefs for their involvement in Rams owner Stan Kroenke moving his team from the Gateway City to Los Angeles eight years ago, thus giving Kansas City the state to itself from an NFL perspective.
Chiefs owner Clark Hunt cast the lone dissenting vote among the six ballots submitted in 2016 by members of the NFL’s stadium committee on a proposal for the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders, not the Rams, to relocate to the LA market. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones stepped in and was instrumental in brokering an alternate deal, which was approved — the Rams and Chargers moving there, and Kroenke then blasting ºüÀêÊÓƵ on his way out of town.
Some people remain angry at Hunt and the Chiefs.
“Clark Hunt knew he had enough suckers in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area who’d fall all over themselves at the first opportunity,†one person commented on a story posted on our website last season about the Chiefs’ lofty TV ratings in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. “Well played, Mr. Hunt.â€
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Added another: “For the life of me I have no idea how anyone that lives in this area, especially if you have done so most of your life, can watch or in any other way support the NFL. ... The NFL called you terrible, the entire area terrible and the Chiefs ownership was first and foremost among them.â€
But it’s a small group of ºüÀêÊÓƵ football fans who see it that way. How do we know that? Look at television ratings — astounding figures.
According to Nielsen, which measures viewership, the Chiefs were involved in the seven most-watched programs shown on ºüÀêÊÓƵ television in the year stretching from the 2023 to 2024 Super Bowls — which they both won. That study encompassed game telecasts plus the pregame/postgame shows bookending this year’s league title game.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ drew the highest rating in the nation outside of KC and Buffalo for a Bills-Chiefs playoff contest last season, and the market was tied for No. 7 in the country for Kansas City’s scintillating overtime victory over San Francisco in the Super Bowl last February. (ºüÀêÊÓƵ had been tied for fourth in preliminary figures released last winter.)
So of course the Chiefs will be fixtures again this season on ºüÀêÊÓƵ television, as they kicked off their season on Thursday night by facing Baltimore in a contest televised nationally on NBC (KSDK, Channel 5, locally).
Each of their 17 games other than the two that will be exclusively streamed are expected to be shown on TV outlets available in the market, most of them on over-the-air stations led by seven set for KMOV (Channel 4).
“ºüÀêÊÓƵ is a great sports city with terrific football fans who have clearly adopted the Chiefs as their viewing favorite,†KMOV general manager JD Sosnoff said this week.
The national allure
The Chiefs have become a national team, and why not? They have a bevy of key ingredients.
First, they’re good — they’ve reached dynasty status. KC has played in the last six AFC championship games, winning four of them and following up their conquests by winning three of those ensuing Super Bowls. The mission now is their third consecutive NFL title, a feat accomplished only three times in the league’s history and not since the Green Bay Packers did so in the 1965-67 seasons.
(Can we please squelch the narrative now in the national media that they’d become the first team to win three successive Super Bowls? While it technically is true, it really is just hype. Green Bay won the first two Super Bowls after having won the NFL championship the previous season, just before the NFL and AFL merged. And it’s not like the Packers’ pre-Super Bowl title in that run came before the automobile was invented.)
Adding to the Chiefs’ luster is that they have a fun-to-watch offense engineered by a widely popular quarterback, Patrick Mahomes. Then last year the coupe de gras was added when KC tight end Travis Kelce began dating pop music megastar Taylor Swift, an ongoing romance that brought her to many games last year and figures to do so again. That has lured non-football fans to Chiefs telecasts to see their beloved entertainer whenever the cameras show her in a suite — and it usually is a lot of times.
Breaking down the schedule
With the opener now in the past, the Chiefs have five more contests this season set for national over-the-air networks (two in NBC’s “Sunday Night Football†package, another by NBC on the Saturday before Christmas and two in ESPN’s “Monday Night Football†bundle.) They also have a pair of contests that will be exclusively streamed, on oddball days for the NFL schedule. Amazon Prime has them a 2 p.m. on a Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and Netflix shows them at noon on a Wednesday, Christmas Day.
The TV schedule for the final week of the season has not been announced, but otherwise there are eight Chiefs games in the Sunday afternoon over-the air schedule shared by CBS and Fox. The team is in the AFC, of which CBS is its primary telecaster, so affiliate KMOV (Channel 4) again is the big beneficiary of the local fervor over the Chiefs.
“We always want the best possible matchup that week for our viewers†KMOV’s Sosnoff said.
But barring vastly unforeseen circumstances, KMOV is expected to show all seven KC games on CBS’ schedule even if there are “more attractive†options at times.
Fox’s focus in on the NFC and has just one Chiefs contest this year, and while it has not been confirmed you can bank that local affiliate KTVI (Channel 2) will carry that one — a Super Bowl rematch with the 49ers on Oct. 20.
“I think we might show that,†KTVI general manager Kurt Krueger said in jest.
The Chiefs have become entrenched on ºüÀêÊÓƵ TV. Only one of their games over the past four years that was shown on a broadcast network was not televised in the market, and it was a meaningless season finale in 2019 after KC already had clinched the No. 1 seed for the AFC playoffs. But the Chiefs were in that same situation last season and KMOV showed them anyway, and Channel 4 was rewarded with 13.3% of the market tuning in — well ahead of any Cardinals telecast last year or this.
Can the Chiefs ratings bandwagon roll on in ºüÀêÊÓƵ?
“There is every indication that viewership is not only sustainable, but likely to continue the trend of continued growth,†Sosnoff said.
Chiefs remaining TV schedule
Date | Opponent | Time | TV |
---|---|---|---|
Sep. 15 | vs Cincinnati | 3:25 p.m. | KMOV (4) |
Sep. 22 | at Atlanta | 7:20 p.m. | KSDK (5) |
Sep. 29 | at LA Chargers | 3:25 p.m. | KMOV (4) |
Oct. 7 | vs. New Orleans | 7:15 p.m. | ESPN |
Oct. 13 | Idle | ||
Oct. 20 | at San Francisco | 3:25 p.m. | KTVI (2) |
Oct. 27 | at Las Vegas | 3:25 p.m. | KMOV (4) |
Nov. 4 | vs. Tampa Bay | 7:15 p.m. | ESPN |
Nov. 10 | vs. Denver | noon | KMOV (4) |
Nov. 17 | at Buffalo | 3:25 p.m. | KMOV (4) |
Nov. 24 | at Carolina | noon | KMOV (4) |
Nov. 29 | vs Las Vegas | 2 p.m. | Amazon Prime Video (streaming) |
Dec. 8 | vs. LA Chargers | 7:20 p.m. | KSDK (5) |
Dec. 15 | at Cleveland | noon | KMOV (4) |
Dec. 21 | vs. Houston | noon | KSDK (5) |
Dec. 25 | at Pittsburgh | noon | Netflix (streaming) |
Jan. 4-5 | at Denver | TBA | TV to be determined |
Other teams
Unlike KMOV, which is Chiefs-centric and plans to usually go with CBS recommendations for other contests, KTVI has a much wider NFL scheduling canvas to fill.
Krueger said Channel 2 will focus on showing games deemed to be of most interest to the ºüÀêÊÓƵ market, not necessarily ones Fox is sending to the largest percentage of the country. That will be the case this Sunday, when the station airs the Tennessee-Chicago game at noon instead of the Pittsburgh-Atlanta contest that is going to a bigger chunk of the nation.
The following week, KTVI has Indianapolis-Pittsburgh at noon although New Orleans-Dallas figures to be Fox’s main game then.
“We’re going with the best game available for our audience,†Krueger said, pointing out that the Bears and Packers are both led by young, emerging quarterbacks.
“There’s a lot of excitement in (nearby) Chicago, so it just made sense,†he said of the decision to show the Bears’ game this weekend. “There’s a lot of excitement up there (in Green Bay), too.â€
He said the determination on what games to show as the season progresses will be made on a case-by-case basis after things become clearer following the first two or three weeks of the season.
“They you start seeing who’s good and who’s not,†he said.
Radio run
The Chiefs again will have a major radio presence in ºüÀêÊÓƵ again this season, as KMOX (1120 AM) returns to the team’s radio network.
It carried the opener on Thursday and will have all the club’s remaining contests that don’t overlap with its marquee broadcast property — Cardinals baseball. Provided there are no schedule changes, that figures to happen just once. That’s on Sept. 29, the final day of baseball’s regular season, a Sunday afternoon when the Cards and Chiefs both play.
The KC game then shifts to KFTK (97.1 FM), an Audacy-owned station as is KMOX.