The NFL scored record Thanksgiving Day viewership for a third consecutive year due almost entirely to the strength of an early contest between the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears.
The Lions' 23-20 victory over the Chicago Bears averaged 37.5 million viewers on CBS (US). The new record for the early Thanksgiving time slot was 11% higher than viewership of the 2023 Thanksgiving Day matchup between the Lions and Green Bay Packers, when 33.7 million viewers tuned in on FOX (US).
The Detroit Lions are now tied with the defending NFL champion Kansas City Chiefs for the league's best record at 11-1.
The other two NFL Thanksgiving games saw their audiences decline compared to the corresponding windows last year.
The Dallas Cowboys' 27-20 win over the New York Giants drew 38.8 million viewers on FOX, down from 41.8 million for the Cowboys-Washington Commanders on CBS last year. The 4:30 p.m. window typically attracts the largest regular-season audience of the year. In 2022, the clash between the same two teams drew an average audience of 42.1 million, setting a record for NFL regular-season viewership.
Although New York stands as the nation's largest designated market area and Dallas-Fort Worth ranks fourth, disappointing seasons for both the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants are weighing on the teams' viewership. Still, the Thanksgiving Day game scored the fifth-largest NFL regular-season audience of all-time and the fourth-best on Thanksgiving.
The final game of the night — which saw the Packers win 30-17 over the Miami Dolphins after an 8:20 p.m. kickoff — posted a total audience delivery of 26.6 million across NBC (US), streaming service Peacock, Telemundo (US), UNIVERSO (US), NBC Sports Digital and NFL Digital platforms, based on live plus same-day custom fast nationals from Nielsen Holdings PLC and digital data from Adobe Analytics. That delivery was down 1.1% from a total audience delivery of 26.9 million for the San Francisco 49ers-Seattle Seahawks content on Thanksgiving night 2023.
A new record
The average NFL viewership for Thanksgiving 2024, encompassing linear TV and digital outlets across the trio of contests, was 34.2 million. That is up from 34.1 million on the 2023 holiday. The 2024 audience marked the highest Thanksgiving average dating back to when records were first kept in 1988. Digital viewing contributed an average minute audience of 1.1 million, up 36% from Thanksgiving 2023, according to the NFL.
The total unduplicated audience across all three games was 141 million, the highest Thanksgiving Day total audience on record. The total was up 6% versus last year and 2% versus the previous record set in 2022. This measure dates back to 2001.
The record viewership underscores the continued importance of live sports to network owners and advertisers. As content increasingly appears across linear, mobile, digital, desktop social and connected TV screens, sports has shown an ability to aggregate large audiences — especially on linear networks such as CBS, FOX and NBC. Convenient access to live sports programming is one of the main areas in which traditional TV still outperforms video streaming services, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research's VoCUL: Mobile, TV & Streaming Video Trends (Population Representative), Q2 2024 survey.
Roughly 38% of survey respondents said traditional TV is their primary means of accessing live sports content, followed by 30% who said they use a streaming service.
Black Friday boost
Still, more NFL content is moving to streaming. And while the audiences are often smaller, they are growing — as evidenced by the league's expansion to Black Friday.
Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime Video delivered 13.51 million viewers for its streaming coverage of the Chiefs' 19-17 win over the Las Vegas Raiders, according to Nielsen data. The Nov. 29 delivery was up 41% from 9.61 million for Miami's blowout of the New York Jets a year ago, when Amazon delivered its first Black Friday presentation.
The audience for Kansas City-Las Vegas peaked in the 6 p.m. ET quarter hour with 17.43 million viewers, when the game ended on a controversial fumble in the final seconds.
Continuing the Prime Video's trend with its "Thursday Night Football" slate, the game also performed well with key demographics, registering a 43% rise to 2.53 million viewers ages 18 to 35 and a 34% jump to 5.72 million viewers 18 to 49. Prime Video's NFL audience skews younger than the league's other rights holders.
As has been the case with "Thursday Night Football" slate every week this season, Prime Video's presentation outperformed all head-to-head programming across broadcast and cable.