The National Football League continues its domestic television dominance, and its network partners are happy to crow about their viewership numbers.
CBS Sports, for example, said Tuesday that its NFL games are averaging 18.55 million viewers for its best start to a season since 2010. That should please the network honchos who agreed to carry the NFL from 2023-33 at $2.1 billion a season.
Its two-game late afternoon national broadcast window on Sunday averaged 24.6 million viewers with coverage split between much of the country watching the Packers beat the Patriots in overtime and a Broncos-Raiders AFC West matchup.
CBS said that was its most-watched Week 4 broadcast window since the NFL returned to the network in 1998 (with Fox having assumed what had been CBS’ NFC package in 1994). It was also up 8 percent over last season’s comparable window.
The network’s early regional window averaged 14.64 million viewers led by much of the country watching Buffalo rally to beat Baltimore 23-20 with a field goal as time expired. The other early CBS games were Jets-Steelers, Chargers-Texans, Jaguars-Eagles and Browns-Falcons.
GO DEEPER The NFL routinely dominates TV ratings. How did the league become the behemoth it is today?
Fox had a single-header spread of games on Sunday, meaning viewers got either an early or late afternoon game rather than back-to-back action.
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