For the second-straight year, college basketball scored a viewership feast in a post-NFL Thanksgiving window. Plus: ESPN posted big declines for Thanksgiving night college football and Thanksgiving Eve NBA.
College hoops benefits again from Thanksgiving NFL lead-in
Leading directly out of the Bears-Lions NFL game, the Thanksgiving Day Illinois-Arkansas men’s college basketball game averaged 5.1 million viewers on CBS — marking the second-largest regular season college basketball audience since 2008. The only game with a larger audience over that span was Michigan State-Arizona on FOX last Thanksgiving, which aired in the same post-NFL window and averaged 5.2 million.
Keep in mind that this is only the second year that college basketball has led out of a Thanksgiving NFL game. Between the massive lead-in (over 37 million), the strategic pairing of Illinois and the Bears, and the potent out-of-home viewing associated with holidays like Thanksgiving, a viewership milestone was virtually inevitable.
NFL lead-ins generally result in some of the biggest college basketball audiences of a given season, with virtually any matchup — from DePaul-Creighton on Christmas 2022 to St. John’s-Xavier on Wild Card weekend in 2020 — able to rank in the season’s top ten.
Tulane-Memphis lays an egg in old “Egg Bowl” slot
ESPN averaged a 0.30 rating and 655,000 viewers for the Thanksgiving night Memphis-Tulane college football game, down 70% in ratings and 71% in viewership from the Mississippi-Mississippi State “Egg Bowl” in the same window last year (1.0, 2.29M). The “Egg Bowl” aired on Black Friday this season in a mid-afternoon window on ABC. Figures for that game were not immediately available.
Viewership also declined sharply from last year’s Tulane-Memphis game, which averaged 1.72 million, but that game aired in a Friday night October window sans any meaningful competition.
Big declines for pre-Thanksgiving NBA
Last Wednesday’s Thunder-Warriors NBA regular season game, which Warriors G Stephen Curry missed due to injury, averaged 1.40 million viewers on ESPN — down 30% from Warriors-Suns on the night before Thanksgiving last year (2.00M).
Knicks-Mavericks led in with a 0.7 rating and 1.33 million, down 45% in ratings and 35% in viewership from Bucks-Celtics on ‘Thanksgiving Eve’ last season (1.1, 2.03M) and the network’s least-watched game on the night since Spurs-Hornets in 2016 (1.11M). ESPN tends to set aside marquee matchups for the night before Thanksgiving.
