{"id":75374,"date":"2025-12-04T04:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T04:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/75374\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T04:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T04:35:11","slug":"nfl-shatters-thanksgiving-day-audience-record-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/75374\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Shatters Thanksgiving Day Audience Record Twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs predicted<\/a>, the NFL<\/a> saw its biggest regular season audiences ever tune into its Thanksgiving Day matchups this year.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Dallas Cowboys defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in what is now the most-watched regular season NFL game of all time, averaging 57.2M viewers on CBS<\/a>. Per Nielsen, viewership peaked with\u00a061.3M viewers\u00a0for the game\u2019s thrilling final minutes leading into the 8 p.m. eastern hour. <\/p>\n

\n\tTo illustrate just how large that audience is, it shattered the previous Thanksgiving record of 42.1M viewers for last year\u2019s Bears-Lions game\u00a0by 27% and rivals January\u2019s AFC Championship game<\/a>, when the Chiefs bested the Buffalo Bills to make it to yet another Super Bowl.
\u00a0
Technically speaking, the Green Bay Packers vs. Detroit Lions actually was the previous record holder for just a few short hours. Earlier on Thanksgiving Day, 47.7M people tuned in to watch that game, which is also quite a hefty audience. For reference, last year\u2019s most-watched Thanksgiving matchup between the Cowboys and the New York Giants averaged 38.8M<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough it was quite a big dip from the daytime audiences, last Thursday\u2019s primetime game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Baltimore Ravens averaged\u00a028.4M viewers, up +7% versus last year\u2019s primetime game between the Packers and Miami Dolphins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn all, all three games averaged 44.7M viewers, the highest ever for Thanksgiving Day, far surpassing last year\u2019s record-setting 34.5M.<\/p>\n

\n\tPer the NFL, digital streaming across platforms delivered an average minute audience of 2.2M, which is the highest on record for Thanksgiving Day and up +58% versus last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NFL is expected to have one of its most-watched regular seasons ever, and the proof is in these Thanksgiving Day games. Data is not yet available for Prime Video\u2019s Black Friday matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Chicago Bears, though that is likely to have a decent showing as well.<\/p>\n

\n\tThrough Week 12, the league\u2019s viewership was up about 6% across all regular season games. In a conference call Wednesday, league execs acknowledged that Nielsen had certainly played a part in this year\u2019s boosted numbers by adding out-of-home viewing and introducing an expanded measurement system through its Big Data + Panel reports. However, at the start of the season, Nielsen advised there would likely be about a 3% lift in viewing as a result of these efforts and, clearly, the league is far surpassing that. It indicates that, in addition to the more accurate audience portrait Nielsen has painted, more people are watching pro football this year.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Deadline previously reported, much of this likely comes down to the fact that there have been an unusual number of close games this season. Per the NFL, 49 games so far have come down to a winning score in the last two minutes, which is the most ever at this point in the regular season. There have also been some major shakeups throughout the league as six out of eight divisions are being led by new teams this year, including the 49ers and the Patriots, both of which were last in their divisions in 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe big question is: When, if ever, might the NFL hit its ceiling?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of room to keep growing,\u201d David Berson,\u00a0president and chief executive officer, CBS Sports, told reporters during the press conference. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that long ago that we thought 100 million viewers for the Super Bowl was about as high as it could go. Now we\u2019re approaching 130, right? It just seems like we keep hitting new heights all the time across all sports, but particularly in the NFL, and as you keep ramping up the entertainment experience, the production value, and as we keep coming back to the idea that this is an increasingly rare opportunity for people to share a special experience, those are only going to become more scarce and more valuable, and it\u2019ll drive the audiences even higher.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As predicted, the NFL saw its biggest regular season audiences ever tune into its Thanksgiving Day matchups this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,12627,10241,80,37291],"class_list":{"0":"post-75374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arlington","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-arlington-headlines","10":"tag-arlington-news","11":"tag-cbs","12":"tag-fox","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-tv-ratings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}