The NFL’s first schedule flex of the year led to CBS securing the top audience for Week 6.
Sunday’s late-afternoon national window game between the San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers on CBS averaged 26.82 million viewers, making it the most-watched NFL game of the weekend. Per CBS, the Buccaneers’ win was the network’s best Week 6 audience since 2007, and beat last year’s comparable window by 32%.
As such, the NFL’s flex scheduling procedures worked exactly as intended. Two weeks prior to Sunday’s game, the league opted to take a New England Patriots-New Orleans Saints game out of the 4:25 p.m. ET time slot, swapping 49ers-Bucs into the window instead. Originally, CBS was slated to show the Green Bay Packers-Cincinnati Bengals game to a national audience, but instead distributed that game to a smaller portion of the country as a result of Joe Burrow’s injury.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football between the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs was not far behind CBS. The Chiefs’ win averaged 24.77 million viewers on NBC, per Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measurements. When adding in Peacock streaming viewership via Adobe Analytics, NBC’s game averaged 27.3 million viewers. (CBS’s numbers give the network a slight edge for Week 6 based on Nielsen-only measurements.)
Moving to Monday night, ESPN’s Monday Night Football doubleheader averaged 21.9 million viewers in the overlapping window. The Buffalo Bills-Atlanta Falcons game kicked off on ESPN at 7 p.m. ET, while the Chicago Bears-Washington Commanders game kicked off at 8:15 p.m. ET on ABC.
As for the individual breakdown, the Falcons’ win over the Bills averaged 10 million viewers on ESPN, the highest on record for a side-by-side MNF doubleheader, and the Bears’ win over the Commanders averaged 12.9 million viewers on ABC.
Rewinding to Thursday Night Football on Prime Video, the New York Giants’ upset win over the Philadelphia Eagles averaged 15.62 million viewers, up 19% versus last year’s Week 6 TNF game. The game was good for the fifth most-watched regular season game in Prime Video’s history.
Data for Fox’s singleheader window is not immediately available.
As with all viewership data this season, it’s important to note that all of these figures utilize Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology (introduced in September) and expanded out-of-home measurements (introduced in February). Both changes have served to increase audience measurements for live sports compared to historical data. As a result, networks are regularly touting multiyear highs.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.