The good times continue to roll early in the NFL season, with FOX the latest beneficiary.
Sunday’s NFL national window on FOX, featuring Ravens-Cowboys in most markets, averaged a 12.9 rating and 27.29 million viewers — marking the largest Week 3 NFL audience in a decade. (Keep in mind that out-of-home viewing was not tracked in Nielsen estimates until 2020.)
The telecast, which also included 49ers-Rams and Lions-Cardinals, increased 12% over Week 3 last year — when most of the country got Bears-Chiefs (24.32M).
FOX is now averaging 19.64 million viewers for its NFL coverage this season, including 26 million for its “America’s Game of the Week” window — up 23 and 27 percent respectively from last year. On both fronts, this is the most-watched start to a season on FOX since 2016.
In other daytime action, CBS averaged a 7.8 and 16.28 million for its singleheader window (featuring Chargers-Steelers) — down 12% and 7% respectively from last year (8.9, 17.52M). Despite the drop, the CBS season average of 18.98 million viewers is up 2% from last year and trails only 2014 as its best three-week start since resuming NFL coverage in 1998.
Shifting to primetime, NBC’s Sunday Night Football averaged a combined 25.1 million across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, an uptick from the 24.8 million that was reported Monday. Both the combined figure and Nielsen-only audience (22.51M) are the largest on record for SNF in Week 3 of the season.
Finally, ABC averaged a 7.2 and 13.18 million for Commanders-Bengals and ESPN a 3.3 and 6.40 million for Jaguars-Bills in an overlapping Monday Night Football doubleheader. Commanders-Bengals declined two and four percent respectively from Eagles-Buccaneers last year (7.3, 13.72M), while Jaguars-Bills — a rout — sank 32 and 29 percent respectively from Rams-Bengals (4.9, 8.99M).
The games combined to average more than 19 million viewers during the period in which they overlapped, peaking at 20.4 million during the 9:15 PM ET quarter-hour.
