All three NFL Thanksgiving Day games delivered historic viewership highs, with Giants-Cowboys the league’s most-watched regular season window on record.
Thursday’s Giants-Cowboys NFL Thanksgiving game averaged a 12.7 rating and 42.1 million viewers across the Fox Sports family of networks, marking the largest NFL regular season audience on record. The previous high was 41.6 million for a 1990 Giants-49ers game on ABC (41.6M).
As goes without saying, the Cowboys’ win also ranks as the most-watched Thanksgiving game on record — up 3% from the previous high set by Raiders-Cowboys on CBS last season (40.8M). Despite the record audience, the 12.7 rating actually declined slightly from last year’s game Raiders-Cowboys (13.1).
For all historic comparisons, keep in mind that Nielsen now includes out-of-home viewing in its fast and final nationals. It is highly likely that a number of NFL windows over the past three decades could have matched or exceeded the 42 million mark had out-of-home been included then.
Per Sports TV Ratings, a full 39% of the audience — 16.6 million viewers — was out-of-home. Moreover, the gain in out-of-home viewing versus last year — 1.3 million — accounted for the entire year-over-year increase.
Earlier in the day, Bills-Lions scored an 11.8 and 31.78 million viewers on CBS — up 11% in ratings and 12% in viewership from last year (Bears-Lions: 28.25M) and the largest audience on record for the early Thanksgiving game (dating back to 1988).
The two Thanksgiving afternoon games rank as the most-watched of the NFL season, with the Cowboys having played in four of the top five.
The Patriots-Vikings nightcap closed out the day with a 9.7 rating and 24.78 million on NBC, up 21% in ratings and 24% in viewership from Bills-Saints last year and the NFL’s largest primetime audience on Thanksgiving since Bears-Packers in 2015 (27.8M).
As with Giants-Cowboys, out-of-home viewing played a large role in the viewership for the other two games — accounting for 30% of the Bills-Lions audience (9.45M) and 27% of the Patriots-Vikings audience (6.7M), per Sports TV Ratings.
In addition to the viewership milestones, Thursday’s shares were particularly pronounced. Giants-Cowboys averaged a whopping 41 share nationally, meaning 41% of all homes with televisions in use were tuned to the game in the average minute. It had a 69 in Dallas (24.5 rating) and a 38 in New York City (11.2 rating). Patriots-Vikings scored a 29 share nationally, hitting north of 60 in Minneapolis (29.4/67), Boston (27.0/62) and Providence, R.I. (27.4/61).
It should be noted that Nielsen fast-nationals now include out-of-home viewing, meaning that the numbers reported Friday should be on par with the final nationals released next week.
(Nielsen estimates from network PR, Sports TV Ratings/Twitter 11.29)
