For all the talk of the NFL’s ratings slump, the league keeps delivering reminders of its dominance.
The Ravens/Steelers Thursday Night Football Christmas special had a 6.5 rating and 14.8 million viewers on NFL Network Sunday afternoon, per Nielsen fast-nationals, easily ranking as the highest rated and most-watched NFL telecast in the network’s history. Figures do not include local simulcast viewership in Baltimore or Pittsburgh.
The previous highs for NFL Network were a 5.7 rating for Cowboys/Saints in 2009 and 10.7 million viewers for 49ers/Ravens on Thanksgiving 2011.
The Steelers’ narrow win, which peaked with 18.5 million viewers from 7:15-7:30 PM ET, ranks as the most-watched NFL Christmas Day game on cable since Lions/Dolphins on ESPN in 1994 (16.1M). The previous high over that span was 11.1 million for Jets/Dolphins on ESPN in 2006. NFL Network’s previous Christmas games were comparably tiny — a 3.8 and 7.8 million for Cowboys/Cardinals in 2010 and a 3.3 and 6.9 million for Chargers/Titans in 2009.
Sunday’s game also ranks as the most-watched NFL game of the season on cable, topping all sixteen Monday Night Football windows on ESPN. The top MNF telecast thus far, Giants/Vikings in Week 4, had 13.2 million. It does not rank nearly as well in ratings, trailing ten MNF telecasts.
For the day, Ravens/Steelers easily topped the marquee Warriors/Cavaliers NBA game on broadcast network ABC (10.1M). Keep in mind it is not at all unusual for the NFL to top the NBA on Christmas Day. Even in 2004, when Shaquille O’Neal‘s first head-to-head meeting with Kobe Bryant scored a 7.3 rating and 13.2 million viewers on ABC, the NFL came out on top with an 8.6 and 15.8 million for Raiders/Chiefs on CBS. With that said — and it is an admittedly small sample size — it is quite unusual for NFL Network to top the NBA’s premier regular season event.
Ravens/Steelers was just the latest NFL telecast to earn a record number. The season has already included the most-watched regular season game in any window since 1995 and the most-watched Thursday Night Football game all-time, not to mention smaller milestones such as the most-watched primetime Week 14 game since 1989. While it is the case that the NFL season has been an unusually weak television draw, it is also true that the league is as capable now as it has ever been of drawing a large audience.
(Numbers from NFL Network, Awful Announcing 12/26)
