With Christmas Eve falling on a Sunday, the NFL was especially dominant on a day otherwise light on live sports.
As previously noted, the Week 16 NFL national window (Cowboys-Dolphins in 93% of markets) averaged a 13.0 rating and 31.52 million viewers on FOX, the largest Sunday regular season audience since 2007. The telecast delivered the NFL’s largest audience on Christmas Eve — historically a low-rated day — since at least 2000.
The national window delivered the top NFL audience of Week 16, topping all three Christmas Day NFL games. It more-than-doubled Sunday’s second-place window, the first half of the FOX doubleheader (mostly Lions-Vikings: 7.0, 15.58 million). The other two Christmas Eve windows were on the low side, as CBS aired the least-watched singleheader of the season (mostly Browns-Texans: 5.8, 12.02M). NFL Network hit a season-high with a 4.1 and 10.21 million for Patriots-Broncos in primetime, but that figure is obviously lower than what the NFL usually generates in that Sunday night window.
Outside of the NFL, Christmas Eve featured hardly any live sports. A Chelsea-Wolves English Premier League match averaged a 0.22 and 403,000 on USA Network (plus a 0.08 and 138,000 on Telemundo). The final of college basketball’s Diamond Head Classic (Nevada-Georgia Tech) drew a 0.19 and 365,000 on ESPN, more-than-double last year’s Christmas Day final on ESPN2 (SMU-Hawaii: 155K).
The top non-NFL sportscast was The Musial Awards, which aired adjacent to the CBS singleheader window and averaged a 0.7 and 1.41 million — down from last year (1.63M).
Sunday, December 24 sports ratings
