The afternoon game on Thanksgiving usually gets good ratings because of the home team, but this year could see some of the biggest ratings ever thanks to the visiting Kansas City Chiefs.
The 4:30 matchup Thursday, with the Dallas Cowboys hosting the Chiefs, is expected to become the most viewed NFL regular season game in history.
“It’s the perfect confluence of three of the biggest brands in American culture — the Cowboys, the Chiefs and Thanksgiving,” CBS play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic on Tuesday.
Viewership Numbers Get A Boost From Nielsen
Chiefs and Cowboys should benefit from how viewership is now tallied
In addition to the fact that both the Chiefs and Cowboys are coming off big wins last week, CBS is benefitting from the way viewership data is now being tallied. Nielsen is using both Big Data and Panel technology to better determine how many people are watching their broadcasts from outside the home or via non-traditional means.
“I think Chiefs-Cowboys has an outside shot at reaching a record-shattering 50 million viewers if it’s close in the final quarter,” Deitsch wrote in his article.
Both Fox, who has the Packers and Lions in the early game of the day, and CBS have a great chance of seeing record viewership. The record for the largest audience in the early window on Thanksgiving is 37.5 million viewers, set last season between the Bears and Lions. Kast year’s middle game between Giants and Cowboys teams that had a combined six wins drew 38.8 million viewers, the fourth-highest Thanksgiving Day game and fifth highest NFL regular season game since 1988 (when data started being kept).
