NFL ratings at multi-week highs in Week 11

Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire

The NFL scored its highest ratings Sunday — both overall and in primetime — since the start of the season.

Sunday’s NFL national window (mostly Packers-Colts) averaged a 12.7 rating and 23.91 million viewers on FOX, marking the league’s second-highest rating and viewership of the season. The Week 1 national window (mostly Buccaneers-Saints) had a 13.2 and 26.3 million, also on FOX.

Ratings still fell 9% and viewership 4% from last year’s Week 11 national window on CBS (mostly Patriots-Eagles: 14.0, 24.89M).

Shifting to primetime, NBC averaged a 10.8 and 19.57 million for Chiefs-Raiders on Sunday Night Football game (20.2M across all platforms), ranking second among primetime games this season behind the Texans-Chiefs season opener (11.2, 20.54M).

The Chiefs’ narrow win increased 11% in ratings and 16% in viewership from Week 11 last season (Bears-Rams: 9.7, 16.85M), just the second time all season that NBC has posted an increase. It snapped a streak of seven-straight games on the network with a single-digit rating.

Notably, the Kansas City market turned in a whopping 50.0 rating and 74 share, meaning half of television households — and nearly three-quarters of homes with TVs in use — were tuned to the game.

ESPN’s Monday Night Football also hit a multi-week high with 12.61 million viewers for Rams-Buccaneers — the largest Monday night audience since Chiefs-Ravens in Week 3 (14.70M). Viewership inched up a fraction from last year (Chiefs-Chargers: 12.57M).

Rounding out the primetime success in Week 11, Thursday Night Football posted its largest audience since Week 4, as noted previously.

In other action, CBS averaged an 8.0 and 14.69 million for singleheader coverage featuring Titans-Ravens or Dolphins-Broncos — down 18% in ratings and 12% in viewership from Week 11 on FOX last year (mostly Cowboys-Lions: 9.7, 16.76M). Viewership did increase 8% over the equivalent date last year, which corresponded with Week 12 of the season.

FOX pulled a 7.3 and 12.74 million for the first half of its doubleheader (mostly Falcons-Saints or Eagles-Browns), down 5% in ratings but up 1% in viewership from last year on CBS (mostly Texans-Ravens: 7.7, 12.62M).

The full list of 2020 NFL ratings is available here.

[Nielsen estimates from Fox Sports PR, NBC Sports PR, CBS Sports PR, ESPN PR 11.24, ShowBuzz Daily 11.24]

Big Ten tops another college football Saturday

Jon Lewis

Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.

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Comments 1

Nate Johnson says:

6 years ago

I was going to question whether NFL was going to have Saturday games this season considering how there will be Conference Championship games on December 19th, the 3rd Saturday in December. I bring that up because the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 clearly states the games in which NFL games can’t have from Friday or Saturday games from 2nd Friday in September to the 2nd Saturday in December. But seems like the NFL has its games ready for Saturday this season on those days.

I believe the games will be exclusively on NFLN. Broncos/Bills and Cats/Packers doesn’t bring a strong draw, but certainly those could be some games to fall back on and watch if College Football is not standing out that day. Something else to keep an eye on is if there will be a high number of non-Conference Championship College Football games being played the Thursday and Friday prior to Championship Saturday. I would even add would some of the Power 5 conference consider moving their Championship game to Friday Primetime. If I was the Pac-12 I would highly consider that move. The ACC should, but I would defer to the B1G Ten first (more on that later). I’m sure the SEC is not afraid of the Bills/Broncos game pulling away viewers from a possible Alabama/Florida game so they stay the same. The B1G Ten could be discouraged seeing that the Packers will play in Primetime, but this is where they should discuss if moving the game to Noon Saturday and competing against a weak Big 12 Championship is worth it this season. FOX should bring that idea to them as well since they’re producing the Saturday NFL games. If they make that move, then the ACC should stick to Saturday Primetime since they’ll have a possible Clemson/Notre Dame re-match and ESPN will of course hype that from ground level to the penthouse. ACC should try to protect that match-up in minimal competition they can find.

Bottomline, the NFL is not bowing down to anyone. This isn’t anything new from them. The fact that this act comes from 1961 is enough to know how they were thinking about playing professional football games while high school and college football was going on in nearby areas. College Football better adjust.

It was a proud moment watching Chiefs/Raiders on Sunday Night and hearing Al and Cris voice clearly. I bring that up because these games pump fake crowd noise and I’m not a fan of it. I assume with the Raiders relocating they have no fake crowd noise to fall back on or at least NBC has no recording of that. It helped how I was able to hear the QBs and players voice as well. Stuff like that is what goes on in a football game. The NBA did terrific with that in their resume play and I was looking forward to the NFL doing that. Now of course, there will be foul language and non-family friendly exchanges being shared which is why the leagues can’t exploit everything that is being displayed, but I like raw authentic unscripted coverage.

Final point, the support that Kansas City has on their franchise is why they will be there forever. I’ve done research on franchises in the NFL and it’s amazing at how much support they have on the Chiefs and think about it they had a 50 year gap of winning a Super Bowl yet maintained high support from fans, their community, and public leaders. I understand every city that had to witness their team re-locate or every franchise that had to deal with a relocation has its own story and reasons, but a franchise like the Chiefs has to depend so much on the 3 groups I just mentioned and they’ve succeeded and looks like they’re not slowing down anytime soon.