The NFL once again set a viewership record for its Thanksgiving tripleheader.
All three games averaged 34.2M cross-platform viewers on Thursday, which is the highest Thanksgiving Day average on record (dating back to 1988), according to the league.
Streaming alone delivered an average minute audience of 1.1M across the three matchups, which is up 36% from last year to be the highest on record for Thanksgiving Day as well. The total unduplicated audience was a whopping 141M, up 6% from last year and up 2% from the previous record set in 2022.
Fox delivered the largest audience of the day with its presentation of the New York Giants vs. the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys prevailed in front of 38.8M viewers, which is the fourth most-watched Thanksgiving Day game on record.
However, it is down from last year, when more than 40M tuned in for the Commanders-Cowboys on the holiday. That ended up being the most-watched NFL game of the regular season, so it remains to be seen if the Giants-Cowboys will take that title this time around or if another matchup will win out.
The early game on CBS was the Chicago Bears vs. Detroit Lions, which averaged 37.5M viewers to be the most-watched early Thanksgiving Day game on record. It was up 11% from last year’s Packers-Lions rout, which previously held that record.
NBCUniversal had the lowest audience of the three with 26.6M cross-platform viewers for its presentation of the Green Bay Packers’ victory over the Miami Dolphins. Still, this is a strong audience for NBCU, which has now managed to surpass 26M viewers for the third consecutive Thanksgiving. It was just slightly lower than last year’s 26.9M for 49ers-Seahawks.
Amazon also hasn’t released any numbers for its Black Friday matchup between the Las Vegas Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs.
