Record 57.2 Million viewers for T-Giving Cowboys-Chiefs

https://www.sportico.com/business/media/2025/57-million-fans-gorge-on-chiefs-cowboys-thanksgiving-feast-1234878203/

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.”