With the Cowboys on the field, Tom Brady in the booth and no competition from CBS, FOX had everything it needed for a massive TV audience — except a good game.
With most of the country receiving Cowboys-Browns (Tom Brady’s broadcasting debut), Sunday’s NFL national window on FOX averaged 23.8 million viewers — a 46% increase over last year (mostly Packers-Bears: 16.27M) and the network’s largest Week 1 audience since 2020. That superlative comes with an important caveat; 2020 was also the last time that FOX and CBS did not air competing doubleheaders in Week 1.
Last season, FOX not only had to compete with a CBS doubleheader, it was outdrawn head-to-head — as CBS scored more than 21 million for its late game. Overall, considerably fewer viewers were watching FOX alone this year than were watching FOX and CBS combined last year (37.62M).
While the game was a total rout — Dallas led at one point 27-3 — viewership was still surprisingly soft given the presence of the Cowboys and the hype surrounding Brady’s debut. Not counting weeks when both FOX and CBS aired doubleheaders, only 4 of 16 national windows last season averaged fewer viewers.
In other early returns from Sunday, NBC and Peacock averaged 22.7 million viewers for Rams-Lions on Sunday Night Football, per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — up 3% from Cowboys-Giants last year (22.0M). The Adobe Analytics streaming audience of 2.8 million is what pulled viewership ahead of last year, as the Nielsen-only figure would come out to about 19.9 million — off from last year’s 20.2 million.
Not counting the Friday night Packers-Eagles game that aired exclusively on Peacock (14.0M), NBC and Peacock averaged 25.9 million viewers for its NFL Kickoff Weekend — up 4% from last year and a nine-year high. That includes an updated figure of 29.2 million for the Kickoff Game (24.6M per Nielsen, plus 4.6 million per Adobe).
