The NFL scored a pair of multi-year primetime highs in Week 8 of the season.
The latest edition of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” (Packers-Steelers) averaged a Nielsen-estimated 11.6 rating and 23.04 million viewers, with the latter figure rising to 25.5 million including additional streaming data tracked by Adobe Analytics — making it the most-watched Week 8 edition of the series, even on a Nielsen-only basis.
The previous Week 8 highs were 23.01 million Packers-Broncos in 2015 (Nielsen-only) and 23.9 million for Cowboys-49ers last year (Nielsen + Adobe Analytics).
The Packers’ win — which marked Steelers QB Aaron Rodgers’ first game against his former team — ranks seventh for the season in viewership and was the most-watched window of Week 8, if one uses the combined Nielsen + Adobe Analytics figure. (NBC is the only network to regularly combine its viewership across two different measurement companies.)
The following night, ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” (Commanders-Chiefs) averaged 17.6 million opposite the World Series across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 — the most-watched Week 8 edition of “MNF” since 2014. Viewership increased 32% from Giants-Steelers last year and topped the competing World Series game by 54% (11.4M).
Week 8 of the season generally coincides with the World Series, and while the NFL usually wins its head-to-heads with the Fall Classic, it rarely comes away totally unscathed. Thus the bar for multi-year highs is a bit lower than it might be in another week.
As for the afternoon windows, CBS averaged an 11.7 and 25.33 million for its late doubleheader game last Sunday (mostly Cowboys-Broncos) — down 4% in ratings but up 2% in viewership from last year. Nielsen’s February expansion of out-of-home viewing would by definition not be reflected in the household ratings.
The CBS window delivered the largest Nielsen-measured audience of Week 8, surpassing Packers-Steelers.
Earlier in the day, FOX averaged an 8.8 and 18.95 million for its singleheader and CBS drew a 5.6 and 11.25 million for the first half of its doubleheader. The networks essentially swapped spots from the same week last year, when CBS outdrew FOX.
Rounding out the Week 8 slate, “Thursday Night Football” (Vikings-Chargers) drew a 6.0 and 13.1 million on Amazon Prime Video. Officially, that marks a 4% increase over Vikings-Rams last year (12.6M), but remember that Nielsen policy is to compare its new “Big Data + Panel” viewership — which adds data from smart TVs and set-top boxes to its traditional panel — to last year’s panel-only numbers.
As Amazon publicized its “Big Data + Panel” numbers last year, it is possible to make an apples-to-apples comparison. On that basis, Vikings-Chargers actually declined 5% from last year’s “Big Data” audience of 13.8 million.
