Out-of-home viewing may be out-of-sight and out-of-mind, but on Thanksgiving Day it played an outsized role in the NFL's viewership bonanza.
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Out-of-home viewing may be out-of-sight and out-of-mind, but on Thanksgiving Day it played an outsized role in the NFL’s viewership bonanza. Of the 41.76 million viewers watching Commanders-Cowboys on CBS Thanksgiving Day — the second-largest regular season NFL audience on record — a whopping 17.25 million were doing so out-of-home, or 41%. That exceeds last year’s out-of-home lift of 39% for Giants-Cowboys. Take out the out-of-home audience and the game averaged 24.51 million, lower than any Cowboys Thanksgiving game in the 11 years prior to 2020, the year when Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing in its final nationals. Even Chargers-Cowboys in 2017, the year of the “NFL ratings panic,” averaged 26.28 million. Packers-Lions averaged 33.70 million viewers on FOX of which 10.37 million were watching out-of-home (31%). The in-home audience of 23.32 million trails every Lions Thanksgiving game in the decade prior to 2020. As for the nightcap 7.26 million were watching out-of-home (29%).
(It is also worth noting that out-of-home viewing is no guarantee of ratings records, as any observer of recent viewership trends for the World Series, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Final and the national championships of college football and basketball can attest — though those events generally do not take place on national holidays.)
Something to see going foward.