Sunday Night Football ratings hit a six-year low opposite the World Series.
Steelers-Lions scored an 8.0 rating and 13.9 million viewers on NBC Sunday night, down 21% in ratings and 23% in viewership from Eagles-Cowboys last year (10.2, 18.0M) and down 19% and 16% respectively from Packers-Broncos in a battle of unbeatens two years ago (13.0, 23.0M).
The Steelers’ win ranks as the lowest rated SNF game since Colts-Saints in 2011 (7.6) and the second-least watched — coming in ahead of only Colts-Texans last year (13.6M).
It was the fourth of nine SNF games with a single-digit rating, the most in a single season since 2008 (seven).
In adults 18-49, ratings fell 26% to a 4.8 — the lowest for SNF in the demo since Seahawks-Buccaneers in 2008 (3.9).
Sunday’s game was trounced head-to-head by Game 5 of the World Series on FOX (10.5, 18.9M), the second-straight year that baseball has beaten SNF. Baseball won in all the key young demographics.
Overall, it was just the sixth SNF game to lose to baseball head-to-head, along with Eagles-Cowboys last year, Colts-Saints in ’11, Cardinals-Giants in 2009 (9.1, 15.0M), Seahawks-Buccaneers in ’08 (6.3, 10.0M) and Steelers-Broncos in 2007 (8.3, 13.3M).
Including streaming viewership, Sunday’s game had 14.0 million viewers — still down 23% from last year (18.2M).
A complete list of NFL ratings is available here.
[Wknd. numbers from Programming Insider 10.31, ShowBuzz Daily 10.31, with additional info from NBC Sports]
