The defending NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles may well be the NFL’s biggest television draw in the 2023 season.
Sunday’s NFL national window on FOX (49ers-Eagles in most markets) averaged a 13.8 rating and 27.70 million viewers, marking the fifth-largest audience of the season and third-largest with Thanksgiving excluded. The Eagles have been featured in five of the seven most-watched windows this season — and each of the top five with Thanksgiving games excluded — all in just the past seven weeks.
Part of the reason for the Philadelphia’s recent drawing power is no doubt the quality of their opponents. The Eagles have played Dallas, Buffalo, Kansas City and San Francisco in a five-week span, four of the most prominent teams in the league. Philadelphia faces Dallas again this coming Sunday. Most of those games have been tightly-contested, though the Eagles were run off the field by the 49ers on Sunday.
Most-watched NFL games this season
The telecast was the most-watched Week 13 NFL window since 2015, when FOX averaged 28.58 million for coverage featuring the then-undefeated Panthers against the Saints. Keep in mind that out-of-home viewing was not tracked in Nielsen final nationals until 2020. Compared to Week 13 last year, ratings increased 12% and viewership 18% from equivalent coverage on CBS (mostly Chiefs-Bengals: 12.3, 23.41M).
In other Week 13 action, NBC averaged a 12.7 and 25.4 million for Chiefs-Packers on Sunday Night Football (23.57M per Nielsen, plus 1.86M per Adobe Analytics) — the largest audience ever for a Week 13 edition of SNF. The Nielsen-measured audience alone is the largest for any primetime game in Week 13 since a 1996 edition of Monday Night Football on ABC (Steelers-Dolphins: 23.86M). (Keep in mind the standard out-of-home caveat.)
As for the current iteration of Monday Night Football, Bengals-Jaguars delivered the series’ largest Week 13 audience since 2010 — 16.45 million viewers — across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2. More details here. With ABC airing games every week of the season, MNF is now averaging 16.7 million viewers — up 29% from last year and the highest average at this point of a season since the last time ABC carried a full season of games in 2005 (16.8M).
Returning to the afternoon windows, CBS averaged a 7.7 and 14.38 million for singleheader coverage featuring Broncos-Texans in a plurality of markets — down 22% in ratings and 25% in viewership from last year on FOX (9.9, 19.17M). Even with the decline, CBS remains on pace for its most-watched NFL season since it resumed NFL coverage in 1998, averaging 19.42 million viewers.
Finally, the first half of the FOX doubleheader (mostly Lions-Saints) averaged a 6.4 (-13%) and 12.20 million (-11%).
For the full list of NFL ratings this season, see the linked page. For other sports ratings from the weekend, see the usual weekly chart.
