Lions-Bears Sets Early Thanksgiving TV Record, Still Trails Cowboys

The Lions’ dramatic 23–20 win over the Bears not only got Chicago coach Matt Eberflus fired—but it also drew the largest TV audience on record for an NFL game in the early Thanksgiving Day window.

CBS drew an average of 37.4 million viewers for Bears-Lions on Thursday, according to Nielsen ratings reported by the NFL. That’s up from the audience of 33.7 million on Fox for Packers-Lions on Thanksgiving Day in 2023, which also was a 12:30 p.m. ET kickoff.

The league said the average audience of 34.2 million viewers across all three Thanksgiving Day games is the highest ever. CBS has not been reporting NFL ratings since its contract with Nielsen expired at the end of September.

That record number for Bears-Lions fell just 1.1 million viewers short of the audience that tuned in to Fox (38.5 million viewers) for the Cowboys’ 27–20 win over the Giants in the late afternoon Thursday. While that’s the most-watched NFL game of the 2024 season so far (with Bears-Lions coming in a close second), the rating was down from the Cowboys’ previous three Thanksgiving Day broadcasts, which all topped 40 million viewers.

Detroit’s 10–1 record entering Thanksgiving, compared to a 4–7 Dallas team depleted by injuries, made for an interesting test case of whether the early game could outdraw the late game, which typically is not the case. The Lions, Bears, and CBS came close, but still no cigar.