CBS Sports still thinks there is plenty of room to grow with NFL viewership after a triple crown win last year as the league’s most-viewed network and the broadcaster with the most-watched single game and most-watched broadcast window.
The climb will undoubtedly be steeper for CBS Sports as it will be without some key building blocks in 2026, including a Chiefs-Bills game that had been something of an annual network tradition and is instead going to NBC this year, or a late-afternoon Thanksgiving broadcast that typically leads all NFL regular-season games each year.
Still, CBS Sports president and CEO David Berson said he’s optimistic after last season, which included an NFL regular-season record for a Chiefs-Cowboys game on Thanksgiving that averaged 57.2 million viewers, and milestones such as being the league’s No. 1 broadcaster (21.3 million viewership average) and top game window (Sunday late afternoon, 25.8 million viewership average).
“We had a great viewership season last year, but it’s not any one game that does that,” Berson said in response to a Front Office Sports question Tuesday at the network’s NFL media day in New York. “We have a lot of fantastic matchups in our schedule, and we are confident about having another great season.”
As the primary AFC broadcaster, CBS’s hopes are pinned in no small part on teams such as the Chiefs and recovering quarterback Patrick Mahomes, as well as the Bills, Patriots, and Ravens.
Particularly standing out in the network’s 2026 schedule, however, are a series of top NFC teams, including the Packers and Vikings that will be the network’s featured Week 1 late afternoon game, a Week 3 international contest in Brazil involving the Cowboys, and late-season matchups including the 49ers, Eagles, Lions, Bears, and the Super Bowl LXI favorite Rams.
“A team like the Cowboys is obviously on Fox more often, but to have a second game with them this year is definitely big, and Cowboys-Rams [in Week 15] we think is a similar type of game as [Chiefs-Bills],” Berson said.
The NFL last year had its most-watched regular season since 1989, and it has already started off its 2026 preseason with a bang, drawing 7 million viewers for last week’s Pro Football Hall of Fame Game.
Viewership Matters
CBS Sports, meanwhile, stands to benefit, like all other broadcasters, from a forthcoming Nielsen change to how it measures co-viewing within television households.
That shift will be the third major one for Nielsen in less than two years. While it won’t likely have quite as much singular impact as prior changes around out-of-home viewing and the Big Data + Panel process, it still promises to be meaningful.
“What we’re pleased about is that the viewership metrics are finally capturing what we think is the accurate audience,” Berson said.
Contracts and Relationships
Not surprisingly, CBS Sports declined to address parent company Paramount’s attempted acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. As litigation continues, CBS Sports is also looking ahead to the long-term future of its relationship with the NFL.
Last week, Fox executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch said there wouldn’t be an accelerated renegotiation of that network’s NFL rights, as had been expected. Berson declined to say whether CBS Sports would take a similarly definitive stance, but he did say the network “checks a lot of boxes” for the NFL and underscored the “depth of the relationship and the success” it has had with the league.
“We have an incredible relationship with the NFL, and we talk to them daily on a whole variety of topics. The NFL values a few things more than most,” Berson said. “One of them is reach. We’re a broadcast network, and that means an awful lot to them. We have a growing streaming service in Paramount+, and that means a lot to them. Marquee, high-end production also means an awful lot to them. We check every box there. They know it. They acknowledge it.”
