The National Football League’s opening weekend generated a strong response from television audiences during its first full week of the new season, according to ratings data associated with broadcasts on CBS and Fox.
The Nielsen data showed CBS as the clear winner of Sunday afternoon’s games, with the network’s telecast of the Detroit Lions-Green Bay Packers game averaging nearly 23.9 million viewers. It was the most-watched Week 1 game on CBS since 1998.
Earlier in the day, CBS’s regional coverage of the Pittsburgh Steelers-New York Jets game drew 17.1 million viewers, the network’s second-best Week 1 early game since 1998. Across both windows, CBS averaged 20.4 million viewers, a 15 percent increase from last year.
Streaming also posted record gains. Paramount Plus had its most-streamed opening NFL weekend ever, with Lions-Packers and Steelers-Jets ranking as the service’s two most-watched Week 1 games to date.
Fox, which was limited to a single game under this year’s schedule rotation, averaged 17.9 million viewers for its slate of games. That made it the most-watched Week 1 single game on any network since 2015, when Fox averaged more than 20 million viewers. Network executives said the results underscored Fox’s single game strength, even in years when CBS holds the exclusive doubleheader.
It marked the first time since 2015 that CBS carried the unopposed doubleheader, while Fox was left with a single game. Analysts noted that CBS’s surge was expected under that arrangement, but Fox’s delivery still ranked among its best early-season performances in nearly a decade.
Industry observers cautioned that comparisons to prior years require context. Nielsen’s new hybrid ratings system, called Big Data + Panel, combines its traditional panel data with return-path information from set-top boxes and smart TVs. Analysts say the product generally produces higher totals than the panel-only approach long used as the industry standard.
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