A whopping 57.2 million viewers watched Dallas’ 31-28 Thanksgiving Day victory over Kansas City on CBS, per a source with knowledge of the data. The late-afternoon game’s average viewership shattered the previous regular-season record set three Thanksgivings ago, when the Cowboys and Giants drew 42 million viewers in 2022 on FOX.
The record was not accidental. The NFL made a strategic decision this year to pit its two most-watched teams against each other on its most-watched day of regular-season football. Viewership is the engine that drives the NFL, and setting a new regular-season viewership record, especially by this much, is news that will cross over from the “inside baseball” world of sports media and sports business writers into the broader sports-fan ecosystem.