2024 AFC Championship Game
Arrowhead Stadium, the site of the game, in 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | January 26, 2025 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Kickoff time | 6:40 PM ET | ||||||||||||||||||
| Stadium | Arrowhead Stadium Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Favorite | Chiefs by 1.5 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | Clete Blakeman | ||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 73,487 | ||||||||||||||||||
| TV in the United States | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | Broadcast: CBS Streaming: Paramount+ | ||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Jim Nantz, Tony Romo, Tracy Wolfson, Evan Washburn, and Jay Feely | ||||||||||||||||||
| Nielsen ratings | U.S. TV viewership: 57.4 million | ||||||||||||||||||
The 2024 American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game was a National Football League (NFL) game played on January 26, 2025, to determine the AFC champion for the 2024 NFL season. The game featured a showdown between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, their second in an AFC Championship in the Josh Allen–Patrick Mahomes era.
The Chiefs entered the game slightly favored to win, due to being the AFC's top seed and having home field advantage at Arrowhead Stadium. However, the Bills defeated the Chiefs in the regular season, which was the Chiefs' first loss after starting with a 9–0 record to begin the season. Kansas City would go on to finish the regular season with a 15–2 record, while Buffalo would finish the season with a 13–4 record, capturing the #2 seed in the AFC.
The game took place at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs won 32–29, in a game that was marred by controversial calls primarily against the Bills. While the controversial calls in the game would receive backlash from fans and commentators alike, league commissioner Roger Goodell defended the league's position on the state of its officiating, calling the perception of the alleged favoritism of the Chiefs by the league's officials as a "ridiculous theory", but did state that the league would find ways to improve officiating to include the implementation of technology to assist the league's officials in future situations.
The Chiefs would go on to lose Super Bowl LIX to the Philadelphia Eagles.