Even with another Cowboys rout, Sunday Night Football continues to clean up in the ratings.
The latest edition of NFL Sunday Night Football on NBC (Cowboys-49ers) averaged a 12.1 rating and 26.3 million viewers (24.3M per Nielsen, plus 2.05 million streaming viewers per Adobe Analytics), marking the largest Week 5 SNF audience on record.
San Francisco’s blowout win, which peaked in the fast-nationals at 29.6 million viewers, delivered the third-largest audience of the NFL season — trailing only two other NBC games: Chiefs-Jets the previous week (26.7M) and the Lions-Chiefs Kickoff Game (27.5M). (On a Nielsen-only basis, the game ranks fifth for the season and NBC owns three of the top five audiences.)
Compared to last year’s Week 5 Sunday night game (Bengals-Ravens), ratings jumped 41% (from 8.6) and viewership 54% (from 16.9M). The Nielsen-only audience increased 52% (from 15.9M) and the Adobe Analytics streaming audience soared 93% (from 1.06M) to rank as the highest ever for a regular season Sunday night game on NBC.
SNF is now averaging 23.8 million viewers for the season (including Adobe Analytics), up 14% from last year and the network’s highest five-week average since 2015.
Notably, Sunday’s game delivered the largest NFL audience of the season among women and girls 12-24 (685K), rising 19% from Chiefs-Jets the prior week (576K). There had been much media discussion of the viewership for Chiefs-Jets among young women, but that game ranks outside of the top five for the season in that demographic.
Sunday marked the first time this season that viewership has increased for any window featuring the Cowboys. Four of the five Cowboys games this season have been decided by at least three touchdowns, but Dallas won the prior three blowouts. That includes a 40-0 rout of the Giants on Sunday Night Football in Week 1, which declined 13% to 21.8 million (20.2 per Nielsen, plus 1.8M streaming viewers per Adobe Analytics).
Dallas-Ft. Worth led all markets Sunday night with a 24.5 rating and 58 share, followed by the Bay Area and Sacramento at a 21.4 each (60 share in the former and 55 in the latter). San Antonio (18.5/44) and Austin (17.5/48) rounded out the top five, with Norfolk, Va., the top neutral market at a 16.5/41.
(Nielsen estimates from NBC Sports)
