Have the Kansas City Chiefs eclipsed the Cardinals in terms of popularity in St. Louis?

Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes displays the Vince Lombardi Trophy, presented to the NFL championship team, after the Chiefs retained it by beating San Francisco in overtime on Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024, in Las Vegas.  

The question might seem preposterous — and it probably is just that. But at least in terms of television viewership, it’s strictly no contest. The Chiefs are romping. Their worst-rated game this season has a 20% higher rating locally than the best-rated Cardinals telecast this year.

It goes far beyond that.

KC not only routs the Redbirds in terms of TV ratings, it again is dominating all of television in the market.

After the Chiefs were involved in the seven most-watched programs appearing on St. Louis TV in the year that ran from their 2023 Super Bowl victory to their repeat performance this year, KC’s games this season account for the eight most-watched programs on Gateway City television in the period running from Feb. 12 — the day after the Super Bowl — through Thanksgiving Day. (Excluded are the presidential debates plus election-night coverage, all of which were on more than a dozen channels, and the tail end of the Chicago-Washington NFL game that was joined after an earlier contest had ended.)

The Kansas City bandwagon is bulldozing St. Louis television despite some locals still loathing that organization for its key role in the Rams’ departure for Los Angeles. A proposal in January 2016 that the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders, not the Rams, would move to Los Angeles was stymied when Chiefs owner Clark Hunt cast the lone dissenting vote among the six submitted by the NFL’s stadium committee. Shortly thereafter, it was the Rams and Chargers packing their equipment.

So why this local love affair with a team instrumental in St. Louis losing an NFL team for a second time, a club that now has Missouri all to itself in the league?

“The Chiefs are an exciting and winning football team,” said KMOV (Channel 4) general manager JD Sosnoff, whose station shows more KC games than any other local outlet. “So whether people love them or don’t, either way, it seems they tune in to watch. The numbers indicate that they’ve captivated St. Louisans as their favorite team to watch.”

Food for thought

There’s absolutely no doubt about the Chiefs having become must-see TV for many St. Louisans. But of course this Cardinals-Chiefs ratings comparison largely is an apples-to-oranges analogy, though it still creates interesting food for thought.

The Cards play about six times a week over six months, often at off-Broadway times, and the vast majority of their telecasts are on a regional sports network that has had significant distribution problems. Plus, the team has been substandard on the field in recent seasons.

On the flip side, the Chiefs have just one game a week over only four months, mostly at convenient viewing times and usually on over-the-air or cable channels that are widely available. And not only has KC been winning, the team also has been the class of the NFL for the past six years. The Chiefs have advanced to the AFC title game in each of those seasons, winning four of them then finishing the job with three Super Bowl victories in that span.

The NFL beating baseball in St. Louis ratings is nothing new, in large part because of some of the aforementioned factors. When the Rams were in their “Greatest Show on Turf” heydays of the early 2000s, most of their games were being seen in more than 30% of the market. The Cards, with over-the-air TV still a key element of their local telecasts, were drawing about 11% on “free TV’ and roughly 7.5% on cable.

‘Destination viewing’

The Chiefs again are soaring on the field, at 11-1 not only the top record in the AFC but three games ahead of the second-place Chargers in the AFC West Division and on the verge of clinching.

Eleven of their games have been on St. Louis television (last week’s contest was exclusively streamed by Amazon Prime Video), and those have been seen in an average of 16.2% of the market per viewership-tracking firm Nielsen. That’s up 6% from the 11-game average (15.2) last year. The Cardinals’ season-long figure was 3.9 this year, down from the previous record low of 5.2 in 2023.

Chiefs ratings are mammoth in the modern, fragmented, TV landscape. The top-rated KC game was seen in 20.2% of the market. The No. 1 non-Chiefs game was the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, which was at 13.6.

“It’s an impressive viewership by any standard,” Sosnoff said of the football team’s performance. “It’s become destination viewing in our market.”

To put the Chiefs’ St. Louis viewership figures in perspective, the Cardinals’ top-rated game this season was 9.4, and that was for a novelty act — their contest against San Francisco at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, that served as a tribute to the memory of the Negro Leagues. It was televised nationally by Fox (KTVI, Channel 2 locally). The worst-rated Chiefs game is 11.7, a Monday night contest against New Orleans on Oct. 7 that was on ESPN and ESPN2.

KMOV has been the big beneficiary of the Chiefs’ local ratings dominance in recent seasons because it is the local affiliate of CBS, which shows the bulk of the Sunday afternoon games when AFC teams such as KC are at home. Channel 4 has carried six Chiefs games to date and has at least one more, at noon on Dec. 15 when they are in Cleveland. (The time and TV for KC’s regular-season finale has not yet been set.)

“Advertisers have responded,” Sosnoff said. “And unquestionably, they know these games are the largest audiences available to market their brands.”

The overall impact of over-the-air TV has waned in recent years just like cable, although sports remains a powerful force on so-called free TV. And he attributes the Chiefs often being there as a key component in their St. Louis success.

“The Cardinals’ audience is tremendous, one of the very best in the country,” Sosnoff said of the team that had the seventh-best local TV rating among U.S.-based MLB clubs this year to end a 14-year run of top-four rankings. “I assume most major league teams would love to have even close to the Cardinals’ viewership.”

Meanwhile, “the Chiefs have grown their brand and audiences substantially by having most of their games accessible on free broadcast television.”

The Chiefs return to action Sunday when they entertain the Chargers on NBC’s national telecast, at 7:20 p.m. (KSDK, Channel 5 locally).

And with cold weather setting in, leading to more people staying inside than on warm fall days, and the season in the stretch run with the NFL playoffs looming, boffo Chiefs ratings are expected to continue to be produced locally. But how long can this bonanza last?

“I don’t know if anyone knows that answer,” Sosnoff said. “But it appears the momentum and viewership continue only to grow.”

Other viewership tidbits

For the calendar year, beginning Jan. 1 and running through Thanksgiving Day and including the Super Bowl, NFL games or related programming (pregame/postgame shows, short snippets of games joined near the end after an earlier telecast had ended), account for the 23 top-rated programs in the St. Louis market.