NFL ratings Week 3: Everybody’s watching Dallas; strong Sunday night game holds interest

Through three weeks of the NFL season, it’s clear that star teams draw viewers — but good games might draw even more. And while old-school fans accustomed to the NFL on broadcast TV might complain about the league’s increasing presence on streaming services, early returns indicate the league has its eye on a different (read: younger) audience.

If you’ve ever wondered why the Dallas Cowboys are on TV so much of the time, Sunday was an object lesson. Despite the Cowboys being mediocre at best, America’s Game of the Week on Fox on Sunday, which featured Dallas-Baltimore, drew 27.29 million viewers, the most-watched telecast on any network. According to Fox, the time slot is averaging 26 million viewers, up 27 percent over last year’s average.

The Chiefs’ last-minute hold against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday night drew a “Total Audience Delivery” — TV and digital — of 24.8 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, according to NBC Sports. The game is Sunday Night Football’s most-watched Week 3 game ever, according to NBC, and marked a 20% increase over last year’s comparable Steelers-Raiders game. The game was also the fourth-most-streamed ever. (Caveats apply: There haven’t been that many streamed games overall, and ratings began taking into account out-of-home viewing only in the past few years.)

Earlier in the week, Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football had the misfortune of airing the Jets’ destruction of the hapless New England Patriots, and the numbers reflected the (relative) lack of interest. Jets-Pats averaged 13.37 million viewers, down 4% from last year’s comparable Giants-49ers game.

It’s the second straight blowout game for Prime, after Week 2’s lackluster Bills-Dolphins game. But, as Sports Media Watch notes, the Prime games are drawing in a younger audience — a median age of 47.3 years old, as opposed to 54.5 for regular NFL broadcasts.

“There has been some debate as to whether Amazon is attracting younger viewers in excess,” SMW politely points out, “or merely that older viewers are not as easily able to find the game on Prime.”

Further data is forthcoming from Week 3, including CBS and Monday night’s overlapping doubleheader.