NEW YORK — Take the two biggest television draws in the NFL. Schedule their game on Thanksgiving Day. Add in millions of viewers, relaxed after substantial servings of turkey. Put them all together, and you could be looking at the most-watched regular-season telecast in the NFL’s 104-year history.
That was the word from CBS Sports president and CEO David Berson when talking about his network’s Chiefs at Cowboys Thanksgiving telecast during an NFL preview event Tuesday.
While Berson declined to make a specific prediction, he noted Patrick Mahomes’s Chiefs and Dak Prescott’s Cowboys are the league’s “two biggest viewership drivers.” They’ll clash in what’s annually the league’s most-watched window of the year: the late-afternoon Thanksgiving game.
At 42 million viewers, the Fox Sports telecast of Cowboys-Giants on Thanksgiving Day of 2022 holds the current record as the most-watched regular-season game. That game eclipsed the longtime record holder: an ABC Sports Monday Night Football clash between the Giants and 49ers on Dec. 3, 1990.
CBS has been touting the Chiefs-Cowboys matchup since the NFL’s spring schedule release. The pinned post of the NFL on CBS X/Twitter account shows Mahomes, Prescott, and Travis Kelce while promising a “Thanksgiving feast.”
Other highlights from the CBS NFL presser:
- Berson is thrilled CBS also landed Chiefs at Bills on Nov. 2. Kansas City vs. Buffalo has “become the biggest rivalry” in the league, he said. “Every network wanted that game. We’ve been telling that story. We’re thrilled to continue telling that story.” In January, the CBS telecast of the Chiefs’ dramatic 32–29 win over the Bills was the most-watched AFC championship game in history, averaging 57 million viewers.
- As the primary TV home of the AFC, CBS televises many games featuring top QBs such as Mahomes, Josh Allen of the Bills, Lamar Jackson of the Ravens, Joe Burrow of the Bengals, and Aaron Rodgers of the Steelers. “We have far more games with the Chiefs and Bills and Steelers and Ravens than any other network,” Berson noted. “Up to nine Chiefs and Bills games. Two or three times any other rights holder.”
Berson confirmed to FOS that the NFL now holds an equity stake in CBS parent company Paramount Global as a result of the $8 billion Skydance-Paramount merger. That gives the NFL part ownership in two media-rights partners: CBS and ESPN. “The NFL now is a shareholder of our company,” he said.
