In addition to its eye-popping Thanksgiving Day audiences, the NFL delivered a non-holiday season-high in Week 12.
The Philadelphia Eagles’ overtime win over the Buffalo Bills averaged 30.901 million viewers in the national window Sunday, the most-watched non-Thanksgiving game of the year. The Eagles previously set that mark less than a week earlier for their win over the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday Night Football, which averaged 29.021 million viewers.
The dizzying stretch means that the four most-watched games of the 2023 NFL season have taken place over the last week, with Thanksgiving Day adding the top two audiences to the fray.
The Eagles-Bills game was also the most-watched CBS national window since 2007, when a game between Tom Brady’s unbeaten Patriots and Peyton Manning’s unbeaten Colts in Week 9 averaged 33.819 million viewers.
The early half of the CBS doubleheader averaged 16.292 million viewers, up from a year ago and a week ago.
Overall, the CBS package is on fire heading into the end of the season. The network is averaging 19.670 million viewers overall for its NFL package, its most-watched season since 1998. The national CBS package is averaging 24.691 million viewers through Week 12, the highest among all NFL media partners. Sports Media Watch notes that the CBS national window hasn’t topped Fox’s national window since 2007.
Fox had the Week 12 singleheader. The network averaged 13.34 million viewers for its five-game slate, slightly up from last year and down big from last week (which featured the Cowboys).
NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast of Ravens-Chargers averaged 16.43 million viewers, down from both last week and last year.
Prime Video aired the NFL’s first-ever Black Friday game in Week 12, and there’s room for it to grow. Just 9.61 million viewers watched the Dolphins’ win over the Jets, the second-least-watched game on the Amazon-owned platform this season.
With Thanksgiving in the rearview mirror, the NFL will return to a more traditional schedule in Week 13. Prime Video starts the week with a quite strong Seahawks-Cowboys matchup on Thursday Night Football. CBS has a five-game singleheader slate, headlined by Broncos-Texans. Fox has the doubleheader, with Lions-Saints and Dolphins-Commanders early and 49ers-Eagles going to nearly all of the country in the national window. In primetime, NBC has Chiefs-Packers on Sunday Night Football, and ABC and ESPN will simulcast Bengals-Jaguars on Monday Night Football.
[Data via Sports Media Watch]
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.