For a fourth-straight year, the NFL’s Christmas Day games were not the league’s most-watched of the week.
Sunday’s Eagles-Bills NFL national window averaged 28.8 million viewers on FOX, surpassing the Lions-Vikings Christmas Day game on Netflix (27.5M) as the most-watched game of Week 17. The Eagles’ narrow win delivered the sixth-largest audience of the NFL season (with or without the inclusion of Adobe Analytics for NBC games), and the second-largest on FOX.
Viewership increased 9% from Packers-Vikings last year, though that is within the margin that could be explained fully by Nielsen’s methodological changes this year — the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to “Big Data + Panel” methodology.
This season was the fourth-straight in which the usual Sunday national window topped each of the Christmas games in the same week. The last time a Christmas game was the most-watched of the week was in 2021, when Browns-Packers topped the national window by about four million viewers. By comparison, the NFL’s Thanksgiving games are annually not only the most-watched games of the week, but of the season.
While the Christmas games did not top the charts, they did account for three of the five most-watched Week 17 windows — no small feat for games that aired exclusively on streaming services. In addition to Lions-Vikings at 27.5 million viewers on Netflix, Broncos-Chiefs drew 21.1 million on Prime and Cowboys-Commanders drew 19.9 million on Netflix. The full tripleheader averaged 22.9 million.
In other Week 17 action, NBC averaged 27.1 million for Bears-49ers on “Sunday Night Football” (Nielsen + Adobe Analytics) — up 38% from Falcons-Commanders last year (19.7M). That is the largest Week 17 audience on NBC since 2013, with the caveat that some of those prior year figures are panel-only, in-home only and Nielsen-only.
Over on CBS, last Sunday’s singleheader averaged 17.2 million viewers (+38%). Figures for the competing regional window on FOX were not immediately available.
Complete figures for Week 17 were not immediately available. In addition to the Christmas and Sunday games, Week 17 included exclusive games on NFL Network and Peacock last Saturday and a cable-exclusive edition of “Monday Night Football.”
