The midweek Christmas games generated all of the headlines, but as usual, the top NFL audience of the week was on Sunday.
Sunday’s Packers-Vikings NFL national window averaged 26.4 million viewers on FOX, up 1% from coverage on CBS featuring Bengals-Chiefs last year (26.2M) and the seventh-largest audience of the NFL season.
The Vikings’ win delivered the top audience of an elongated Week 17 that began with a Christmas Day doubleheader on Netflix. Those games averaged just over 24 million viewers (per Nielsen fast-nationals). This year was the third straight in which the usual Sunday national window topped the Christmas games in the same week.
Packers-Vikings was flexed into the late window to replace Cowboys-Eagles, which was moved into the 1 PM ET regional slot. The early window — featuring Cowboys-Eagles in 87% of markets — averaged 14.0 million, down 22% from last year on CBS (mostly Dolphins-Ravens: 17.93M). Over on CBS, singleheader coverage headlined by Jets-Bills averaged 12.6 million — down 19% from last year on FOX (15.5M).
Between the Christmas doubleheader and a Saturday NFL Network tripleheader, the early game slate consisted of just six games — three on each network — compared to a ten-game slate in Week 17 last year.
Shifting to primetime, ABC and ESPN combined to average 22.2 million viewers for Lions-49ers on Monday Night Football — not only the most-watched MNF game this season, but the fifth-most watched since the series began airing on ESPN in 2006.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football (Falcons-Commanders) averaged 19.7 million across NBC and Peacock, including additional streaming coverage tracked by Adobe Analytics — the most-watched Week 17 edition of SNF since 2019.
Rounding out the Week 17 slate, NFL Network averaged nearly nine million viewers for its Saturday tripleheader. Broncos-Bengals averaged 11.3 million, making it the most-watched Saturday afternoon game on the network. Cardinals-Rams followed with 8.8 million viewers and Chargers-Patriots brought up the rear with 6.4 million. Last year, NFL Network carried a Saturday tripleheader in Week 15.
