NFL viewership continued its upward trajectory in Week 3, with Fox leading the way.
The network notched the most-watched game of the week for the second consecutive week, averaging 25.47 million viewers for the 4:25 p.m. ET window that featured the Chicago Bears-Dallas Cowboys game in 85% of markets, and the Arizona Cardinals-San Francisco 49ers game in the rest of the country. The window was nearly bang-on last year’s season-to-date average of 25.66 million viewers.
Transitioning to Sunday night, NBC and Peacock scored 25.3 million viewers for Sunday Night Football, which featured the Kansas City Chiefs earning their first win of the season against the New York Giants. Per the network, it was the most-watched Week 3 Sunday Night Football contest in 20 seasons.
ESPN’s Monday Night Football captured a similarly impressive audience, earning 22.8 million viewers for the Detroit Lions’ win over the Baltimore Ravens. The ManningCast on ESPN2 contributed 887,000 viewers to the overall figure. Per the network, Monday’s game was a top-4 audience across all Monday Night Football games since 2006.
Rewinding to last Thursday, Prime Video scored its third most-watched Thursday Night Football game ever as the Buffalo Bills’ win over the Miami Dolphins drew 16.45 million viewers, up 23% versus last year’s comparable game (Patriots-Jets, 13.37 million). The telecast fell about one million viewers short of Packers-Commanders the previous week, which was the largest audience in the Amazon era.
CBS averaged 16.15 million viewers for its single-game window on Sunday afternoon.
It’s important to note, all figures listed above include Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology which mars historical comparisons. All things being equal, it’s impossible to know whether these games would be setting multi-decade records as the networks are touting.
Nevertheless, the viewership figures continue to paint a picture of strength for the NFL. Other than college football, no live sports programming comes close to the audiences the NFL draws, with or without Nielsen’s Big Data.
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.