Thanksgiving Ratings Show No Ceiling for NFL and Networks

After shattering all prior records for Thanksgiving Day viewership, the National Football League and its rights holders believe there is no ceiling to what is possible on the holiday. 

The league posted an average audience of 44.7 million viewers across the three Thanksgiving games, the highest such figure for the holiday on record, and a massive 30% jump from the prior aggregate viewership record set just a year ago. The totals were led by the late-afternoon thriller between the Chiefs and Cowboys on CBS that averaged 57.2 million viewers and set an NFL record for the most-watched game in the regular season, and nearly matched the audience for the American Football Conference championship game last season between the Bills and Chiefs.

The early afternoon game between the Packers and Lions on Fox, averaging 47.7 million viewers, and the primetime matchup between the Bengals and Ravens on NBC, averaging 28.4 million, similarly set new milestones for those respective broadcast windows.

TV Execs Want More 

With the series of records in place, prior expectations of what can be achieved, now or in the future, are quickly being thrown out the window.

“There’s a lot of room to keep growing,” said Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill. “It wasn’t that long ago that we thought 100 million viewers for the Super Bowl was about as high as it could go. Now we’re approaching 130 million. 

“We keep hitting new heights all the time, across all sports, but particularly in the NFL. As we keep ramping up the entertainment experience, the production value, and as we keep coming back to the idea that this is an increasingly rare opportunity for people to share a special experience, those [opportunities] are only going to become more scarce and more valuable, and it will drive the audiences even higher,” Mulvihill said. 

Added CBS Sports president David Berson, “Every time we hit a record, people ask, ‘Can we exceed it?’ and we continue to [do so]. The power of the NFL is just incredible.”

Strategic Scheduling

The NFL moved the start time of the Packers-Lions game by a half hour to 1 p.m. ET, and it was rewarded with an audience that, while dwarfed by the following game, also easily beat the draw for any other regular-season game in its history. 

Part of that shift owed to prior analytics showing strong viewership spikes after 2:30 p.m. for last year’s Thanksgiving game with the Lions in that early window. NFL EVP of media distribution Hans Schroeder said the league will continue to pay close attention to such trends as it sets the schedule, and future matchups, for Thanksgiving games.

Schroeder, however, said there are no larger shifts in the immediate plans, such as adding a fourth game to the Thanksgiving schedule.

“We’re going to be smarter. The commissioner is always pushing to improve,” Schroeder said in response to a Front Office Sports question about the future Thanksgiving schedule. “But we also love the lineup we have, and the partnerships we have with Fox, CBS, and NBC.”

Metrics Matters

A conference call the NFL held Wednesday with the three Thanksgiving broadcasters to herald the audience featured plenty of plaudits for Nielsen. That represented a rather different sentiment from the start of the season, when the media measurement agency introduced its Big Data + Panel methodology, only to have the league say “there’s more work to be done.”

In particular, the league and networks credited Nielsen for recent changes to capture viewership data much more broadly, including a separate expansion of out-of-home audiences. 

“The scorekeeping in this business has finally caught up to the reality, the power that sports has to bring us together,” Mulvihill said. “The numbers finally reflect the reality that’s been in place for many, many years, and it’s a welcome change.”

Schroeder, however, said the NFL is still working with Nielsen to refine elements of the Big Data + Panel measurement process.

“We still think there’s more opportunity [for further audience growth] once the Big Data element gets captured by Nielsen appropriately,” he said.