Sunday Night Football topped the ratings charts for a second-straight week, despite the Cowboys’ blowout loss to the 49ers.
Cowboys-49ers averaged 24.3 million viewers on NBC Sunday night, marking the largest television audience of the week. Sunday Night Football has been the week’s most-watched show in back-to-back weeks, and NBC has taken top honors three times in five weeks this season. (The full NFL ratings page is available here.)
In the college game, the Texas-Oklahoma Red River Rivalry topped the weekly charts with 7.8 million viewers across ABC and ESPN2 (more than eight million including additional streaming data not tracked by Nielsen), followed by Alabama-Texas A&M on CBS at 7.3 million. (For more college football ratings, see this page.)
The MLB Postseason delivered the top non-football audience of the weekend with 3.31 million for Phillies-Braves Game 1 on TBS Saturday evening. MLB playoff games were the five most-watched non-football sporting events of the week.
NASCAR’s playoff race at the Charlotte Roval averaged 2.28 million on NBC, the smallest audience for the fall Charlotte race since at least 2000. Across all Charlotte races, it topped only a hastily added midweek edition in 2020 (1.51M) as the least-watched over that span.
Weekly sports ratings, October 2-8
Only events with at least 150,000 viewers are listed. Household ratings of 0.55 or below are shown to the second decimal point.
Sunday, October 8
For the third time in five tries this season, the NFL national window did not rank as the top game of the weekend. CBS averaged 23.1 million for coverage featuring Chiefs-Vikings in most markets, down from last year.
Saturday, October 7
The Oklahoma-Texas “Red River Rivalry” posted its largest audience in 14 years Saturday.
Friday, October 6
ESPN’s Kansas State-Oklahoma State game comfortably outdrew Nebraska-Illinois on FS1 Friday night.
Thursday, October 5
Amazon’s Thursday Night Football scored its fourth-straight double-digit increase to open the season.
Wednesday, October 4
The Phillies’ clinching Game 2 win over the Marlins was the most-watched game of the MLB Wild Card Series with 3.24 million viewers.
Tuesday, October 3
As would be the case again a night later, Marlins-Phillies delivered the top audience on day one of the Wild Card Series with 2.99 million.
Monday, October 2
In the first of ten additional Monday Night Football simulcasts on ABC, the broadcast network contributed more-than-half the audience for Seahawks-Giants.
