Packers-Cowboys tie tops Week 4; Ravens-Chiefs underwhelms

There was no winner on the field, but last week’s Packers-Cowboys game helped NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” take the top spot in viewership during Week 4 of the NFL season.

Packers-Cowboys averaged 26.9 million viewers on the latest edition of NBC “Sunday Night Football,” per a combination of Nielsen and Adobe Analytics — the third-largest audience of the NFL season. NBC owns four of the top six, with the caveat that the network is the only one regularly combining viewership across two measurement companies.

On a Nielsen-only basis, the 40-40 tie averaged an 11.9 rating and 23.87 million viewers — still good enough to rank as the top NFL telecast of the week. As one would expect given the matchup and Nielsen’s methodological changes this year, ratings and viewership increased comfortably over Bills-Ravens a year ago (10.1, 20.00M).

Ranking a close second for the week, the CBS national window featuring Ravens-Chiefs averaged an 11.0 and 23.77 million — actually down from coverage featuring Chiefs-Chargers last year (11.7, 24.15M). The featured Ravens-Chiefs game was not nearly as compelling as advertised. It should be noted that while ratings and viewership declined, the 36 share was on par with a year ago.

CBS was also down in its early doubleheader window, which averaged a 6.4 and 13.50 million.

Elsewhere, FOX averaged an 8.0 and 17.8 million for its singleheader window, up 3% from last year. That is a small enough increase to be fully accounted for by Nielsen’s February expansion of out-of-home viewing and September shift to “Big Data + Panel.”

In the first overlapping “Monday Night Football” doubleheader this season, Bengals-Broncos averaged 13.2 million viewers on ABC and Jets-Dolphins drew 8.5 million on ESPN, the latter figure per Programming Insider. The games combined to average 21.4 million during the two hours they overlapped, up 5% from the equivalent overlapping period during Week 4 last year, another increase that is small enough to be accounted for by Nielsen changes.

Last week’s Thursday Night Football game (Seahawks-Cardinals) averaged a 6.2 and 13.25 million viewers, down 18% from Cowboys-Giants last year (16.23M). Nielsen policy is to compare this year’s “Big Data + Panel” viewership to last year’s panel-only numbers, but as Prime Video is the only NFL broadcaster who reported “Big Data + Panel” viewership last year, an apples-to-apples comparison is possible. Versus last year’s “Big Data” figure for Cowboys-Giants, Seahawks-Cardinals declined 25% from 17.61 million.

Rounding out the Week 4 numbers, NFL Network averaged 7.9 million for the Vikings-Steelers International Series game from Dublin, per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics — the second-largest audience for an International Series game on the network, behind Dolphins-Chiefs from Frankfurt two years ago. The game had a 3.5 rating and 7.53 million per Nielsen.