As the NFL is ready to begin Week 3 in the League Where They Play for Pay, let’s review Week 2’s ratings.
CBS/NFL Network aired the season premiere of Thursday Night Football that had a crazy ending , then CBS alone had regional coverage on Sunday. Fox had the doubleheader this past week and had Dallas at Philadelphia in the national 4:25 p.m. ET window. NBC aired the NFC Championship rematch of Seattle at Green Bay this time at Lambeau Field. ESPN was given the New York Jets at Indianapolis matchup which paid the price for a bad game.
Let’s see how the networks did in Week 2:
CBS/NFL NETWORK
The Thursday Night Football game between Denver and Kansas City turned out to have one of the wackiest endings of all-time. And thanks to the game being close, the viewership set a record for the series since CBS took over last year. The combined rating/share for the season premiere of TNF on CBS and NFL Network was 12.9/24, up 2% from last year’s Pittsburgh-Baltimore which garnered a 12.7/22.
Viewership was an impressive 21.117 million viewers, also up 2% from last year’s 20.8 million. The viewership for NFL Network gave it a cable win as Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand tweeted:
That means 16.955M people watched TNF on CBS; 4.162M on NFLN. Advertisers buy their time on the combined rating: 21.117M viewers.
— John Ourand (@Ourand_Puck) September 18, 2015
CBS
We don’t have final numbers from CBS but for its regional coverage highlighted by New England at Buffalo and San Diego at Cincinnati, the Tiffany Network received a 10.8 overnight rating.
ESPN
The Monday Night Football game which had the New York Jets defeat the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium gave ESPN one of its least-viewed Week 2 games since 2011. Jets-Colts drew an 8.1 final rating with 12.5 million viewers, down 12% in rating and 16% in viewership from last year’s Philadelphia-Indianapolis game in Week 2 (9.2 rating and 14.9 million viewers).
The 2011 Week 2 game between the St. Louis Rams and New York Giants had a 7.8 rating and 11.9 million viewers.
Next Monday night, ESPN should have a bigger audience and better rating with Kansas City at Green Bay.
An interesting tidbit about the ratings to date, Sports Media Watch points out that both of this season’s games called by Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden have had a lower rating and viewership than the Week 1 late contest called by Chris Berman and Trent Dilfer.
FOX
With the national ratings draw Dallas Cowboys in the late window taking on the Philadelphia Eagles in the late 4:25 p.m. window, Fox saw some very good numbers for its game.
Cowboys-Eagles drew a 15.5 final rating with an impressive 27.2 million viewers making that the most-watched program of the week. Fox’s rating was up 8% from last year’s Week 2 national game which was Kansas City-Denver on CBS (14.4). And viewership was up 9% from 2014 (24.9 million viewers).
And according to Sports Media Watch, the Cowboys-Eagles game was the most-watched in the Week 2 national window since 2000. The highest viewership in that span was in 2010 when CBS’ Patriots-Jets game also in Week 2.
NBC
The Sunday Night Football contest between Seattle and Green Bay drew huge numbers and was the most-watched Week 2 primetime game since Washington-Dallas in 1991 on ABC’s Monday Night Football.
Seahawks-Packers at Lambeau Field received an average rating/share of 15.1/26 which was up 16% from last year’s Week 2 game between the Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers which drew a 13.0/22.
Viewership was an average 26.4 million which increased 18% from last year’s 22.3 million.
Through three games, NBC is averaging 15.5/27 and 26.8 million viewers which is the best at this point for the NFL’s premier primetime package since 1993 when ABC averaged 28.3 million.
So we can surmise at this point that Fox and NBC are seeing white hot numbers through the first two weeks of the NFL season. Thursday Night Football got off to a very good start and CBS has to be feeling good with the New York market involved its second TNF game.
And we’ll see if ESPN’s numbers continue to slump in Week 3.
Comments are closed.