Thursday Night Football ratings continue to rise on FOX.
49ers-Cardinals averaged an 8.5 rating and 14.0 million viewers on FOX and NFL Network Thursday night, marking the highest rated and most-watched Week 9 Thursday Night Football game on record (dates back to 2012). Keep in mind that prior to last year, the Week 9 edition of TNF aired exclusively on NFL Network.
San Francisco’s win increased 25% in ratings and 26% in viewership from last year (Raiders-49ers: 6.8, 11.06M) and 122% and 125% respectively from 2017 (Bills-Jets: 3.8, 6.21M).
Ratings and viewership have increased for all six Thursday Night Football windows on FOX this season, with four hitting multi-year highs. Including Sunday games, FOX has seen increases for 15 of its 18 NFL windows thus far.
Including streaming viewership on Amazon Prime, Twitch, Yahoo! Sports and the Fox and NFL digital platforms, TNF averaged 14.6 million (+27%). The series is now averaging 15.7 million viewers across all platforms (+21%).
Thursday’s game averaged a 3.9 rating in adults 18-49 (+22%) and a 2.6 in adults 18-34 (+13%). As usual, it dominated all other primetime programs in viewership and the key adult demographics.
As one would expect, TNF was no match for Games 6 and 7 of the World Series on FOX the two previous nights. Game 6 had a 9.6 rating, 16.43 million viewers and a 4.1 in 18-49; Game 7 had a 13.1, 23.01 million and a 6.1 in the demo.
[Nielsen estimates from NFL Communications 11.1, Programming Insider 11.1]
