A pair of high-profile Saturday NFL games easily beat back competition from the College Football Playoff.
Saturday’s Steelers-Ravens NFL regular season game averaged 15.4 million viewers on FOX, marking the top Nielsen-measured audience of the day, and up from 14.3 million for Bengals-Steelers on NBC in the same window last year. NBC’s Texans-Chiefs lead-in averaged 15.5 million across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, with a Nielsen-only figure not immediately available.
The games easily outpaced the competing College Football Playoff first round matchups on TNT, TBS and truTV, as Clemson-Texas drew 8.6 million and SMU-Penn State 6.4 million. Indeed, Steelers-Ravens outdrew even the primetime CFP games on ESPN and ABC that did not face NFL competition (14.3M for Tennessee-Ohio State and 13.4M for Indiana-Notre Dame). Texans-Chiefs may have as well, pending a Nielsen-only figure for that game.
It is not unusual for the NFL to schedule Saturday games at this point of the season, though in recent years those games have primarily aired on NFL Network. Excluding Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, this year’s games were just the 12th and 13th Saturday windows on a broadcast network since 2005.
The late season Saturday games are not typically marquee matchups, but this year’s slate was unusually potent in order to facilitate the same four teams playing on Christmas Day. (It is also fairly likely that the NFL wanted to ensure a viewership victory over the CFP by scheduling some of its most prominent teams on broadcast television.)
It bears noting that even a strong Saturday showing is nothing quite compared to the usual Sunday audience. FOX averaged 19.7 million for its Sunday singleheader (mostly Eagles-Commanders), a season-high for the window and up from last year on CBS (12.0M).
In other Sunday action, the CBS national window (mostly Patriots-Bills or 49ers-Dolphins) averaged 20.5 million, down a sharp 35% from last year, when coverage featuring Cowboys-Dolphins averaged the largest Sunday regular season audience since 2007 (31.5M). The network’s early window (featuring Rams-Jets) had just 9.6 million, down an even steeper 38% from last year’s early window (15.6M).
With the Cowboys eliminated from playoff contention, their matchup with the Buccaneers on NBC’s Sunday Night Football averaged a Nielsen audience of 17.1 million (18.2M including Adobe Analytics). Due to the Christmas Eve holiday, last year’s comparable Sunday night game was an NFL Network exclusive that averaged a Nielsen-only audience of 10.2 million.
Rounding out the Week 16 slate, the Packers’ Monday Night Football rout of the Saints averaged 14.6 million across ABC and ESPN. Last year’s Week 16 game was a Christmas night Ravens-49ers contest that averaged nearly 28 million on ABC; the 2022 Week 16 game aired exclusively on ESPN and drew 10.9 million.
