Week 6 of the 2023 NFL season saw Fox Sports deliver the league’s most-viewed window of the year.
26.085 million viewers watched the America’s Game of the Week window on Sunday. While much of the country saw the New York Jets upset the Philadelphia Eagles, much of the Midwest and south saw the Detroit Lions beat the Tampa Bay Bucs and the Phoenix and Los Angeles markets watched the Los Angeles Rams top the Arizona Cardinals.
Highlighted by the @NYJets upset win over the @Eagles, @FOXSports delivers the most-watched NFL telecast of the season. pic.twitter.com/13RsXYGFQk
— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) October 17, 2023
NBC Sports will take umbrage with the “most-watched” tag. While its broadcasts of Lions-Chiefs in Week 1 and Chiefs-Jets in Week 4 fell below Fox’s Week 6 mark in Nielsen’s metrics, both tower above the game when using NBC’s Total Audience Delivery metric.
Regardless of how you slice it, the national Week 6 window is still Fox’s most-watched window of the season, topping Bears-Chiefs in Week 3.
Sunday Night Football came in second for Week 6 action. NBC announced 18 million viewers for its broadcast of Giants-Bills, while Nielsen reported 16.71 million. Either metric is a steep drop from last week and last year.
The early windows were just about evenly split. 13.86 million viewers watched Fox’s three-game early slate (49ers-Browns was the most distributed game) and 13.31 million watched the five-game CBS singleheader (Seahawks-Bengals going to much of the country). Fox’s early window was up from both last week and last year, while the CBS singleheader was down from both last week and last year.
Prime Video also saw another year-to-year and week-to-week increase. Its broadcast of Broncos-Chiefs on Thursday Night Football averaged 13.83 million viewers, the streamer’s third-largest audience of the season and a stunning 57% increase from the 2022 game (Commanders-Bears).
In Week 7, Jaguars-Saints kicks off the week Thursday on Prime Video. Fox has a five-game singleheader window, highlighted by Lions-Ravens early and Steelers-Rams late. CBS has the doubleheader, featuring Bills-Patriots early and Chargers-Chiefs in the late national window. NBC has a whopper of a matchup on Sunday night, airing Dolphins-Eagles. The week ends with 49ers-Vikings on ESPN and ABC Monday..
[Data via Sports Media Watch]
