The NFL’s late-afternoon Thanksgiving Day game between the Chiefs and Cowboys is poised to make history, but the early-window contest between the Packers and Lions is positioned for its own potentially record-setting audience—thanks to a strategic pivot by Fox.
The network will be simulcasting the 1 p.m. ET holiday game between the NFC North division rivals on its free Tubi streaming service. Tubi normally does not show Fox’s live sports programming, with that typically reserved in streaming for Fox’s new Fox One platform. Fox, however, does utilize Tubi for some major sports events, and the Thanksgiving NFL broadcast certainly qualifies.
Before the August debut of Fox One, Tubi was also used to enlarge the distribution of Super Bowl LIX, and it proved critical in that game setting a new viewership standard in U.S. television history. Tubi delivered an average audience of 13.6 million for the Eagles’ rout of the Chiefs, representing nearly 11% of the event’s overall average audience of 127.7 million.
A similar boost could help Fox set a new audience record for an early-window Thanksgiving NFL game. Last year’s comparable game between the Bears and Lions, shown on CBS, averaged 37.5 million viewers to set the current mark for that broadcast slot. That total also nearly matched the average of 38.8 million for the late-afternoon Thanksgiving game last year between the Giants and Cowboys.
As most other streaming services have not only shifted to a subscription model but also elevated their pricing significantly in recent months, Tubi remains an industry outlier on multiple fronts. It’s entirely advertiser-supported, and it also recently reached profitability.
“Our verticals in live news, and live sports in particular, are really the beneficiaries of the broad reach that we have,” said Fox executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch in a recent earnings call.
Fox’s move for Thanksgiving arrives as CBS has lofty aspirations of its own for the 4:30 p.m. ET broadcast of the Chiefs and Cowboys, the NFL’s two most-watched teams. That game could set a league record for regular-season viewership and even approach an average audience of 50 million.
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