On the night before Christmas, the Eagles and Cowboys stirred up an audience of nearly 28 million.
Airing on Christmas Eve Saturday, Eagles-Cowboys averaged a 12.0 rating and 27.83 million viewers as the sole game of the NFL national window on FOX — the largest Week 16 NFL audience since 2009. (Keep in mind out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen’s viewership estimates prior to two years ago.)
The Cowboys’ win delivered the largest Christmas Eve NFL audience since at least 2000, including years when the date fell on the NFL’s traditional Sunday. For the season, it ranks fourth among all NFL telecasts with the Cowboys featured in five of the top six.
FOX delivered the top two audiences of Week 16, with its Christmas Day Packers-Dolphins game placing second at a 10.7 and 25.92 million — the eighth-largest audience of the season and behind only Packers-Browns last year (28.59M) as the league’s most-watched Christmas game in the past two decades.
The other Christmas games did not perform as well. The Rams’ rout of the Broncos averaged 22.57 million viewers across CBS (21.67M) and Nickelodeon (906K), down not only from Packers-Browns in the same window last Christmas, but also from last year’s equivalent Sunday window on the day after Christmas (mostly Steelers-Chiefs: 24.16M). It still delivered the largest Christmas audience on record for CBS, which had not carried an NFL game on the holiday in 18 years.
Buccaneers-Cardinals chipped in a 7.7 and 17.15 million on NBC Christmas night, marking the least-watched Week 16 edition of SNF in three years — despite the Christmas holiday and associated out-of-home lift. As goes without saying, ratings and viewership outpaced last year’s Christmas night game, which aired exclusively on NFL Network (Colts-Cardinals: 5.3, 12.62M).
While the NFL dominated Christmas Day, its numbers paled in comparison to Thanksgiving Day — when the league averaged 31.78, 42.06 and 24.78 million viewers in the respective windows.
Returning to Christmas Eve, NFL Network averaged a 4.25 and 10.94 million for Raiders-Steelers in primetime — unsurprisingly down from its Christmas night game last year (the aforementioned Colts-Cardinals), but its second-largest audience this season. The out of home effect was substantial, as the game had two million more viewers than Ravens-Browns the previous week (9.0M) despite a lower rating.
In the afternoon, FOX averaged a 7.5 and 15.86 million for the first half of its doubleheader (mostly Seahawks-Chiefs or Giants-Vikings) and CBS drew a 7.4 and 15.30 million for its singleheader (mostly Bengals-Patriots). The former posted a modest gain in viewership and the latter a modest decline.
Rounding out the Week 16 slate, ESPN’s Monday Night Football (Chargers-Colts) averaged 10.94 million viewers — the least-watched Week 16 edition of MNF since 2018, when Christmas Eve fell on a Monday (Broncos-Raiders: 8.60M). Ratings were not immediately available.
