Despite being saddled with a pair of blowouts in the marquee 4:25 p.m. ET broadcast window and closing out the day with a dispiriting primetime slog that all but tucked fans into their beds, the NFL’s TV partners on Sunday didn’t lose any ground on the ratings front.
According to Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel estimates, the average deliveries for the four Sunday NFL slots were all but identical to the year-ago numbers, as CBS/Fox/NBC averaged 18.33 million viewers, flat (+0.07%) versus Week 10 of 2024. All told, the NFL posted a net gain of 48,000 linear impressions across the afternoon and packages.
While the league would have suffered its first year-to-year decline of the season if the legacy ratings system were still in place, advertisers aren’t overly concerned with ifs and buts.
Fox got the worst of it, as the two games in the network’s national window weren’t exactly easy on the eyes. Lead by Rams-49ers in approximately 75% of U.S. markets, Fox averaged a week-high 23.11 million viewers, down 6% versus the analogous broadcast on CBS in 2024. A year ago, the Eye network served up 24.61 million viewers with Philly’s 34-6 curb-stomping of Dallas, a game that was only slightly less compelling than last weekend’s NFC West pairing. (LA easily handled an injury-besieged San Francisco unit on the way to a 42-26 road win.)
Fox’s alternate game, Lions-Commanders, was similarly one-sided, as Detroit bullied its way to a 44-22 win as Dan Campbell assumed the play-calling duties from offensive coordinator John Morton.
Together, the two late Fox games were decided by a cumulative margin of 38 points. While the blowouts took some of the air out of the big afternoon window, things could have been a lot worse; as it happens, the analogous pair of CBS games from a year ago were settled by 53 points. (Week 10 was born under a bad sign; two years ago, the Cowboys throttled the Giants 49-17 in the big-reach Sunday afternoon slot, and the marquee matchup in 2021 ended in a 17-0 shutout.)
Fox still claimed the week’s most-watched broadcast, which is a testament to the NFL’s stranglehold over our fall Sundays … and the not-insignificant boost the networks have been enjoying since Nielsen upgraded is ratings methodology in September. The addition of data culled from set-top boxes and connected TVs has been instrumental in ensuring that this season’s deliveries remain up compared to the 2024 numbers, as has the expansion of the company’s out-of-home sample.
Year-to-date, the networks are staring down the barrel of an 8% decline in overall U.S. TV usage, with churn among younger viewers in the double digits. That said, the NFL is largely unbothered by the ongoing erosion of the national TV habit, as the league’s deliveries through Week 10 are up 7% versus the year-ago period.
NBC notched the week’s second-biggest TV audience (18.59 million) with an absolute stinker in Chargers-Steelers, as Aaron Rodgers labored through one of the worst games of his career. Rodgers, who turns 42 next month, threaded the needle on just 51.6% of his passes en route to a lowly 4.5 QBR—down from the previous week’s 61.3—and completed his sole touchdown pass well into garbage time. For all that, NBC still grew its audience 7% compared to last season’s comparable Lions-Texans broadcast, which Detroit won care of a 52-yard field goal as time expired.
Again, while Nielsen’s new method of counting the house helped keep Sunday Night Football up versus last year, that’s not to say that the gains were entirely inorganic. Back out the bonus BDP impressions and NBC’s deliveries would still have been an improvement over last season’s closely fought contest. (Worth noting: Approximately 2 million viewers took in Sunday night’s slog via Peacock, a figure that was largely in keeping with the number of fans who streamed the Lions-Texans nailbiter in 2024. In other words, Peacock didn’t put its thumb on the scale, as the net gain in streaming impressions was a little north of 100,000.)
Sunday’s biggest swings were recorded in the 1 p.m. ET window, which CBS dominated. Thanks in large part to a Bucs-Patriots duel that was beamed to nearly 80% of the country, CBS served up its biggest Week 10 singleheader since 2011, averaging 18.21 million viewers. That marked a 28% improvement over last season’s analogous window on Fox (14.25 million), which featured the 49ers’ 23-20 win over the Bucs.
On a Sunday that was shot through with unspectacular games—the average margin of victory was 12.1 points, up from 9.6 a year ago—CBS was gifted with a rare gem, as Baker Mayfield and Drake Maye padded their respective MVP résumés and the Pats extended their winning streak to seven. Now sitting pretty at 8-2, New England has put some distance between itself and the 6-3 Bills atop the AFC East, while Tampa has dropped two of its last three games after getting off to a 5-1 start.
Fox countered with Giants-Bears in the early window, averaging 13.4 million viewers opposite the CBS slate. Paired with a Ravens-Vikings outing that was marred by eight Minnesota false starts, deliveries for Big Blue’s latest choke job were down 21% versus the year-ago draw.
The football outlook should improve immeasurably this weekend, as CBS eyes a Bucs-Bills/Chiefs-Broncos doubleheader and NBC caps off the Sunday slate with Lions-Eagles. Fox, meanwhile, is sending its A-team to Minneapolis for the early Bears-Vikings brawl. When the two teams last met in the Week 1 Monday Night Football slot (22.12 million viewers), J.J. McCarthy connected on two fourth-quarter touchdowns and ran it in for a third to rally Minnesota to a 27-24 victory.