The massive drawing power of the National Football League was on full display during the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, as the league set a new domestic regular-season viewership record and established a series of other historic audience marks, reports Sportsbusiness.com.
The late afternoon Dallas-New York Giants game on Thanksgiving Day on November 24 drew an average domestic audience of 42 million, representing the NFL’s most-watched regular-season game on any network, and surpassing a highwater mark of 41.55 million that had stood for 32 years from a 1990 Monday Night Football game between the Giants and San Francisco.
Average viewer records date to 1988.
The early afternoon Buffalo-Detroit game on Thanksgiving Day, meanwhile, drew an average domestic audience of 31.63 million, peaking at 41.98 million, and representing the most-watched early Thanksgiving game ever on any network.
The primetime Thanksgiving game of New England-Minnesota closed out the banner day with an average Total Audience Delivery of more than 26 million across NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL Digital platforms. The figure marked the second-most watched Thanksgiving primetime game ever.
Overall, the league said it posted its largest Thanksgiving viewership ever in 2022, averaging 33.5 million viewers per game across linear and digital platforms, beating a previous high of 32.9 million set in 1993 with a two-game slate, and surpassing last year’s mark for Thanksgiving by 6 per cent.
Thanksgiving Day traditionally produces the NFL’s highest regular-season audiences of the year, but this year was boosted by a series of close games involving marquee teams, as well as cross-promotional efforts from Fifa’s ongoing men’s 2022 World Cup, which is also posting historic audiences in the US.
Totals prior to 2020 did not include out-of-home viewership, which is now being counted by Nielsen, and a result, actual totals for those prior games are higher than what is officially known. But the NFL is still finding additional room for growth beyond its already dominant position across the entire American media landscape.
“NFL games on Thanksgiving are possibly the smartest sports programming ever, even if they didn’t realize it at the time they began,” tweeted Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports executive vice president and head of strategy and analytics. “Being a lifelong staple of a meaningful holiday is huge for the league’s popularity.”
The run of record viewership also continued on November 26 with Fox Sports’ college football coverage of Ohio State-Michigan, with the network drawing an average of 17 million viewers, representing its largest-ever audience for a college football game.
Overall, the league said it posted its largest Thanksgiving viewership ever in 2022, averaging 33.5 million viewers per game across linear and digital platforms, beating a previous high of 32.9 million set in 1993 with a two-game slate, and surpassing last year’s mark for Thanksgiving by 6 per cent.
Thanksgiving Day traditionally produces the NFL’s highest regular-season audiences of the year, but this year was boosted by a series of close games involving marquee teams, as well as cross-promotional efforts from Fifa’s ongoing men’s 2022 World Cup, which is also posting historic audiences in the US.
Totals prior to 2020 did not include out-of-home viewership, which is now being counted by Nielsen, and a result, actual totals for those prior games are higher than what is officially known. But the NFL is still finding additional room for growth beyond its already dominant position across the entire American media landscape.
“NFL games on Thanksgiving are possibly the smartest sports programming ever, even if they didn’t realize it at the time they began,” tweeted Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports executive vice president and head of strategy and analytics. “Being a lifelong staple of a meaningful holiday is huge for the league’s popularity.”
The run of record viewership also continued on November 26 with Fox Sports’ college football coverage of Ohio State-Michigan, with the network drawing an average of 17 million viewers, representing its largest-ever audience for a college football game.
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