Record 57.2 Million Fans Gorge On Chiefs-cowboys Thanksgiving Feast

Despite being stuffed with enough leftover pie and Dagwood-grade turkey sandwiches to feed a small army, we’re going to have to add a fresh serving of crow to the post-Thanksgiving noshathon, as the NFL’s TV deliveries far outstripped our earlier predictions.

According to the official Nielsen data, CBS absolutely demolished the standing record for a regular-season NFL broadcast, as its coverage of Thursday’s Chiefs-Cowboys game averaged a staggering 57.23 million viewers. Dallas’ 31-28 win over Patrick Mahomes & Co. topped the previous high-water mark—42.06 million for the Giants-Cowboys Turkey Bowl window in 2022—by 38%.

CBS’ TV turnout was also up 47% vs. last year’s comparable game on Fox, another tryptophan-infused matchup between New York and Dallas that served up 38.84 million viewers. The holiday audience was so outsized that it nearly matched the all-time record for a non-Super Bowl broadcast (57.9 million for Saints-Vikings in the 2009 NFC Championship game).

Out-of-home deliveries, which in years past have contributed as much as 38% of the NFL’s overall afternoon Thanksgiving audience, were not immediately available, but it is likely that this year’s numbers were considerably higher than the 2020-2024 results. At that time, Nielsen’s OOH coverage was limited to 65% of the U.S. TV population in the Lower 48 states; the company expanded its sample to 100% at the beginning of this year.

Nielsen also upgraded its ratings methodology prior to the start of the 2025 NFL season, in a bid to account for the rapidly increasing segment of fans who take in the action via connected/smart TVs. Earlier this year, Leichtman Research Group reported that approximately 87% of all U.S. households owned at least one CTV device, with 46% of adults watching video on said gizmos on a daily basis.

Dallas’ season-preserving victory peaked with 61.36 million viewers in the game’s final quarter-hour (7:45 p.m-8 p.m. ET).

In a statement released Wednesday, CBS Sports president and CEO David Berson characterized the confluence of the Chiefs and Cowboys locking horns on Thanksgiving as a “perfect recipe for a record audience.”

Earlier in the day, Fox’s broadcast of the NFC North battle between the Packers and Lions averaged 47.7 million viewers via the flagship TV network and its streaming sibling, Tubi, which marked a 28% improvement versus CBS’ comparable Bears-Lions window in 2024 (37.38 million).

The Lions’ 31-24 home loss peaked at 57.96 million viewers during the 4 p.m. ET quarter-hour. Fox’s live broadcast kicked off at 1 p.m. ET, or a half-hour later than the early window’s traditional 12:30 p.m. ET start time, while CBS’ coverage began at 4:30 p.m. ET. The move was designed to align the Thanksgiving start times with the standard Sunday afternoon NFL windows.

The upgrade to Nielsen’s ratings currency has coincided with a uniformly strong showing for the NFL, as the league’s media partners averaged 17.7 million viewers per window through Week 12, up 6% from the year-ago period.

Rounding out the holiday football feast, NBC’s primetime presentation of the Bengals’ 32-14 undoing of the Ravens averaged a record 28.4 million viewers across the broadcast flagship, Peacock and Telemundo, up from 24.2 million for last year’s Dolphins-Packers game. The deliveries for Prime Video’s Bears-Eagles outing on Black Friday should be released sometime Thursday.

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