The NFL hit new heights on Thanksgiving this year.
A dominant fourth quarter propelled the Dallas Cowboys to a 45-10 win over the Washington Commanders on Thanksgiving Day. And the eyes of America were watching in staggering numbers.
On Tuesday, CBS announced that the game averaged a stunning 41.760 million viewers, good for the second-most-watched NFL regular season game ever.
UPDATE: The NFL ON CBS Thanksgiving Day game is now the second-most watched regular season game in NFL history with 41.760 million viewers per Nielsen Final National data https://t.co/VbY7TS4C1s
— CBS Sports PR (@CBSSportsGang) November 28, 2023
The record was set a year ago for Fox’s broadcast of Giants-Cowboys, which averaged 42.058 million viewers.
This is your obligatory reminder that out-of-home viewing was not included in data for games prior to 2020.
In the early window, Fox averaged 33.698 million viewers for the Packers’ win over the Lions. While that’s significantly lower than the CBS late window, it’s still the most-watched early Thanksgiving window ever, a highlight that shouldn’t be ignored.
https://twitter.com/FOXSportsPR/status/1729541553033453618?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1729541553033453618%7Ctwgr%5E3c5f3a0eb989b9e068765d0abc03dda814ec543f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fawfulannouncing.com%2Fratings%2Fcowboys-thanksgiving-commanders-nfl-cbs-record.html
That breaks the mark set a whole year ago when 31.627 million watched Bills-Lions in the early window on CBS.
In primetime on NBC, 24.780 million viewers watched the 49ers’ win over the Seahawks, with streaming data from NBC’s Total Audience Delivery metric pulling the total viewership up to 26.3 million viewers on English-language outlets. That’s good for the second-most-watched primetime Thanksgiving game ever, behind 2015’s Packers-Bears matchup (27.8 million viewers).
It was one hell of a week for the NFL. In addition to the league’s second-most-watched regular season game ever, its most-watched early Thanksgiving game ever, and its second-most-watched primetime Thanksgiving game ever, Eagles-Chiefs last Monday was the NFL’s most-watched Monday Night Football game since 1996. Halfway through this season, the NFL was seeing its best viewership in nearly a decade.
Data for the rest of Week 12, including the NFL’s first-ever Black Friday game, was not immediately available.
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