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The MTV Video Music Awards scored their largest audience in more than a decade on Sunday night.

The awards averaged 8.99 million viewers on CBS and MTV in Nielsen’s final big data plus panel ratings for Sunday (including an encore on the latter); preliminary ratings had the show at 8.43 million. That’s up by 60 percent from last year’s 5.6 million viewers — which was also a multi-year high. Sunday’s audience was the biggest for the VMAs since the 2015 show brought in more than 12 million people across multiple channels.

The VMAs also had their best performance among adults 18-49 (2.67 million in that age range) since 2018; and among adults 25-54 (3.14 million) and adults 18-34 (1.15 million) since 2019.

Madonna — who also opened the show with a performance featuring Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter — was the night’s big winner with seven awards. Taylor Swift won video of the year for “The Fate of Ophelia” and also was given the first Artist Director award for musical artists who also direct videos.

The awards, hosted by Snoop Dogg, also featured tributes to Dolly Parton and George Michael. Nirvana was awarded the Video Vanguard honor.

The VMAs also benefited from a very large NFL lead-in. The awards peaked at 15 million viewers for Madonna’s opening number, which directly followed a game-winning field goal for the Baltimore Ravens over the Dallas Cowboys (who are perennially among the NFL’s biggest TV draws). The 2025 VMAs also had a strong NFL lead-in (23.9 million viewers); Ravens-Cowboys averaged 24.9 million and peaked at more than 30 million viewers at the end of the game — which means those viewers were led directly into the VMAs.

CBS accounted for 8.18 million viewers, or 90 percent of the total audience. MTV’s simulcast drew 641,000 viewers, and the replay chipped in 142,000 more.

On social media, the awards accounted for 159 million video views across platforms, up 8 percent year to year.

Sept. 29, 2:10 p.m. Updated with NFL lead-in ratings for the VMAs.

Sept. 29, 3 p.m. Updated throughout with final same-day ratings for the VMAs.