January 10, 2025

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Parity makes the NFL a year-to-year league for most franchises. But few have a history of misfortune that can match the Lions. The current team, however, has surged into the spotlight. Detroit has emerged as one of the league’s best teams and immediately gained a national audience, becoming a huge draw. We explore how important the Lions are to NFL viewership, particularly in a season in which the Cowboys and 49ers are out of the playoffs.

—Michael McCarthy

From Punch Line to Prime Time: Lions Have Captured America’s Attention

Detroit Free Press

The Lions were an NFL laughingstock for decades, with viewers bemoaning their annual appearance on Thanksgiving Day games. But NFL fans are not laughing at coach Dan Campbell’s scrappy squad anymore. 

Heading into the NFL playoffs, the 15–2 Lions are the No. 1 seed in the NFC. Viewers have caught on; the Lions are challenging the mighty Cowboys as one of the league’s most popular TV draws. 

The same people who scoffed when the NFL paired the Lions with the Chiefs for the league’s 2023 opening kickoff game are voting with their TV remotes. The Lions could become the Cinderella team of the NFL playoffs. And the Cowboys? As Charles Barkley would say, they’ve gone fishin’ until next season.

As FOS has reported, Patrick Mahomes’s defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs are America’s new top TV team, costarring in three of the five most-watched regular-season games in 2024—and eight of the top 20. 

But the Lions appeared in four of the 20 most-watched games this season. That ties them with the vaunted Cowboys—as well as the Packers and Ravens.

Yes, the Cowboys beat the Lions for the regular season’s most-watched regular-season game on Thanksgiving Day. But Giants-Cowboys—which averaged a season-high 38.8 million viewers—was broadcast in Fox Sports’ marquee 4:30 p.m. ET window. Despite kicking off at 12:30 p.m. on Turkey Day, Bears-Lions came close, averaging 37.5 million viewers on CBS.

This season’s viewership represents a changing of the guard. For decades, the Cowboys were the league’s ratings juggernaut. America’s Team won its last Super Bowl in 1996. Even though they stunk this season, Cris Collinsworth admitted NBC’s Sunday Night Football would air 17 Cowboys games if they were allowed to.

“I’m not kidding. It doesn’t matter what their record is,” Collinsworth told Dan Patrick.

Given their glamorous Super Bowl pedigrees, the Steelers, Packers, and 49ers boast the biggest national fan bases. Ditto for the Giants, Jets, and Bears since they play in the country’s first- and third-largest TV markets. But the emergence of the Lions and Ravens has benefited the NFL’s TV partners. Especially since the league suffered a 2.2% drop in viewership this season, with games averaging 17.5 million viewers across all networks.

Campbell’s high-risk, high-reward coaching style, and the emergence of stars like running back Jahmyr Gibbs, have made the Lions must-see TV. It wouldn’t surprise me if they generated the biggest audience during the NFL’s divisional weekend. Chiefs-Lions would be a dream matchup for Fox Sports’ coverage of Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9. In February, the CBS telecast of the 25–22 Chiefs overtime win over the 49ers set the record for most-watched Big Game in history, with 123.4 million average viewers across all platforms. 

Mike Greenberg, host of ESPN’s Get Up, points to Campbell’s charisma, and Detroit’s high-octane offense, as key reasons for their newfangled TV popularity. Many fans have fallen in love with the Lions, he says.

“They’re essentially a founding franchise of the NFL. So they have a huge and long-suffering fan base,” Greenberg says. “People like to see these perennial losers [succeed]. Maybe not quite to the same level when the Cubs finally won the World Series. But I think there’s an element of that.”

EVENT

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Greenberg on Get Up‘s Record Year

Melissa Rawlins/ESPN Images

Speaking of Greenberg, his Get Up just posted its most-watched year ever. The weekday morning show averaged 387,000 viewers in 2024. That’s up 2.4% from last year—and 27% from its debut in 2018.  We asked the 25-year morning TV veteran for his thoughts on why Get Up has taken off. Greenberg credited his staff and rotating cast of analysts, ranging from his “crazy uncle” Rex Ryan, Domonique Foxworth, and Dan Orlovsky to Monica McNutt, Dan Graziano, and Kimberley A. Martin.

“The key to success [on a weekday morning show] is consistency. You can’t be good two days a week—and then mail in the other three. People will start to become habitual viewers of your show if you’re consistently good. They have to know you’re going to be good,” Greenberg told me. “You have to walk in there and do a good show five days a week, every week. Our group is really, really in a rhythm right now.”

To me, the biggest improvement in Get Up is its injection of humor. The cast is loose and seems to be having a blast. Bits like Jeff Saturday’s “Pancakes,” and Damien Woody’s helmet-smashing game picks, are just fun TV. Greenberg agreed.

“The operative word that we have been going for since the very beginning, literally since the inception of the show, is joy. The joy of sports. The coverage, in my opinion, is sometimes so serious. And there’s certainly instances where serious coverage of certain stories is warranted and appropriate. But by and large, people view sports as their escape,” he says. 

“They view sports as their ability to remove themselves from the serious and important and frightening and anxiety-ridden elements of their lives, whatever they may be. I think it is our job to provide them that. Those have been my mantras from the day we started this thing. We are going to lean in to the joy of sports. The reason people are watching these games in the first place is to be made happy. To enjoy them, to be excited, to invest so much of themselves emotionally into these games that don’t actually have any meaning in their lives—but somehow still mean everything,” Greenberg said.

“We try very hard to lean in to that. And lean as far away as we can from the more serious stuff. I just don’t feel like it’s what people want to wake up to. There’s plenty of space for that, and there’s plenty of places on ESPN where that stuff is being covered really well, but I always say to our audience, if we start your day with a smile, then we have accomplished our goal.”

Mike’s Mailbag

Guess Who’s Back

Katie Nolan has been keeping a low profile. But the former Fox Sports and ESPN on-talent still has plenty of fans, given the reaction to us posting news of the launch of her new SiriusXM sports podcast, Casuals. 

“LOVE THIS,” wrote Jodee Storm Sullivan on X/Twitter. ”Needed this so bad,” tweeted Steven Guajardo.

Mike Drops

NBA Ratings, Jerry Jones, Prime Plans

Cooper Neill/Amazon

  • There was a lot of talk about the NBA’s lagging TV ratings before the league’s explosive Christmas Day performance, which shrank its year-over-year viewership decline to just 3%, rebounding from a previous 18% dip. But Taylor Rooks is not worried.

    We reported that Rooks will host Amazon Prime Video’s NBA studio coverage with analysts Blake Griffin and Dirk Nowitzki. She says The Association will always be at the forefront of sports TV—and conversation. “People love the NBA. There are diehard fans that are watching it all of the time,” Rooks told FOS this week. “To me, it doesn’t feel like there’s a dip.

    “Obviously, because I’m so immersed in it and I’m watching it all of the time. These things ebb and flow. The NBA is an outstanding product. They are some of the best athletes in the world. And some of the best games—as evidenced on Christmas Day. Every single matchup was phenomenal. It was such a great day of basketball.”

  • If you haven’t seen the Jerry Jones cameo in Paramount’s Landman, check it out here. Rich Eisen of NFL Network said the Cowboys owner deserves an Emmy Award. Jones “stole the show” from Hollywood heavyweights Jon Hamm and Billy Bob Thornton, tweeted Skip Bayless. As my FOS colleague Matt Tabeek messaged me: “I swear I thought this can’t be real, I thought it was A.I.-generated, it was so damn good. I couldn’t believe it. It’s like he really channeled. He was speaking from his heart, like it wasn’t just a line in the movie. I think they said, ‘Just be real, talk about your own experience or something like that.’ But it was so genuine, so authentic, I was blown away.”
  • Fresh off scoring NBA rights, Prime Video’s Jay Marine told CNBC’s Alex Sherman the streaming giant is interested in bidding on MLB and UFC. (You can watch the interview here.)
  • He’s baaack: Regional sports network operator Main Street Sports, formerly Diamond Sports Group, is hiring longtime ESPN executive Norby Williamson to oversee FanDuel Sports Network production, according to Awful Announcing. The near-40-year ESPN executive left last year after clashing with Pat McAfee, who attacked Williamson as a “rat” who was trying to “sabotage” his show.

Question of the Day

Do you believe the Lions have staying power as a top NFL franchise?

 Yes. They’ve emerged from the desert   No, this is short-lived 

Previous result: 54% of you thought Amazon’s first three NBA hires—Taylor Rooks, Blake Griffin, and Dirk Nowitzki—represented a good start.

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Written by Michael McCarthy
Edited by Or Moyal, Catherine Chen

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