Football season means one thing for sports radio: the deepest, most attentive fanbase across any platform. Yet again, a nationwide study has found NFL diehards gravitate toward audio over TV, treating the pregame, postgame, and daily conversation as part of the ritual.
Vision Insights Decoder, as analyzed by Audacy, found that 81% of avid NFL fans are sports talk radio listeners and another 81% follow games through play-by-play coverage on radio. Sports radio audiences post a 41% higher concentration of avid fans than the general sports-fan population, the largest gap of any platform the study measured.
Across formats, the pattern holds. Sports podcast listeners register at 82% avid, game highlight TV viewers at 79%, social media followers at 78%, and live game TV viewers at 77%. Radio and podcast audiences remain the two highest-indexing groups in the study.
Nearly a quarter of avid NFL fans spend six or more hours a week following football content, with 15% logging six to 10 hours and 7% logging 11 hours or more. Forty-seven percent of avid fans follow their favorite teams’ news weekly or more, and on game days, 43% watch pregame or postgame coverage, 24% follow along on social media at the same time, and 16% tailgate.
The study also found that 69% of avid fans say being a fan makes them feel part of a community, and 61% say their love of sports is a major part of their identity.
Nielsen Commspoint analysis included in the report found radio advertising moved NFL super fans through the purchase funnel more effectively than television, Facebook, YouTube, and CTV ads. Among super fans exposed to radio ads, 56% reported awareness, 49% consideration, 51% purchase, and 41% loyalty, with the purchase figure marking radio’s widest margin over the other channels measured.
This pattern isn’t new. Audacy’s 2026 State of Audio: Sports Fandom found sports audio listeners indexing 41% higher in fan avidity than average sports fans, tracking offseason trades and daily team news at far higher rates than TV audiences.
Analysis from other broadcasters point in the same direction. In August, Radio Ink covered a Cumulus Media/Westwood One analysis finding NFL radio listeners rated their season engagement higher than TV viewers, with 39% saying they had muted their television broadcast to hear the radio call. Weeks into the current season, Radio Ink reported that flagship stations carrying live NFL coverage posted about a 60% average increase in Sunday audience share compared to the previous four weeks, with tune-in climbing 111% heading into kickoff.
