Despite a blowout, Fox drew its largest audience of the season (excluding Thanksgiving) for the 49ers’ win over the Eagles.
San Francisco’s win, which went to nearly the entire country in the second half of Fox’s doubleheader, averaged 27.70 million viewers. That’s Fox’s best audience of the season (excluding the Packers-Lions Thanksgiving Day game), surpassing the Eagles’ win over the Cowboys in Week 9 (which averaged 27.14 million viewers). The good vibes did not extend to the early half of the doubleheader. That three-game slate, headlined by Lions-Saints, averaged just 12.20 million viewers. That’s the least-watched NFL window of the week.
NBC delivered a strong audience for the Packers’ upset win over the Chiefs. Per NBC’s Total Audience Delivery metric, 25.8 million watched the game across broadcast and digital platforms, good for the most-watched Week 13 Sunday Night Football game ever.
Prime Video’s broadcast of Seahawks-Cowboys in Week 13 averaged 15.26 million viewers, as discussed yesterday. That’s a record high for the Amazon-owned platform in its nearly two full seasons of Thursday Night Football exclusivity.
CBS struggled in its five-game singleheader window, averaging 14.38 million viewers. Despite the poor viewership in Week 13, CBS is still having its best NFL season since 1998.
Week 14 has some standout games on the slate. Prime Video does not have one of those, with Patriots-Steelers as the TNF matchup this week. Fox has the singleheader, headlined by Rams-Ravens and Seahawks-49ers. CBS has the doubleheader, highlighted by Jaguars-Browns early and Bills-Chiefs late, as the national game of the week. In primetime, NBC has the best game of the week: Eagles-Cowboys. Finally, ESPN airs a pair of games on Monday Night Football, with Packers-Giants airing on ABC and Titans-Dolphins airing on ESPN.
[Data via Sports Media Watch]