The NFL Owns Thanksgiving: 2025 Games Obliterate Viewership Records
The numbers for the 2025 Thanksgiving slate are officially in, and they aren’t just impressive—they are absolutely astronomical. The NFL didn’t just break records this year; they took the old record book, deep-fried it, and served it up with a side of cranberry sauce.
Chiefs and Cowboys: The Perfect Ratings Storm
We knew the late-afternoon window was going to be big. You had the Dallas Cowboys—a franchise that pulls in massive ratings whether they are winning Super Bowls or imploding spectacularly—hosting the Kansas City Chiefs, the league’s modern dynasty. It was the immovable object meeting the irresistible force of viewership.
But nobody predicted this. The CBS broadcast averaged a mind-boggling 57.2 million viewers.
To put that into perspective, that is the most-watched NFL regular-season game on record. It didn’t just inch past the previous record (42.1 million for Giants-Cowboys in 2022); it shattered it by over 15 million viewers. That is a Super Bowl-lite number for a Thursday in November. It turns out, when you put Patrick Mahomes on the same field as the Star, America stops whatever it’s doing to watch.
The Lions Are No Longer Just an Appetizer
For years, the early Detroit Lions game was something you watched out of tradition (or pity) while mashing potatoes. That narrative is officially dead. The Lions’ showdown against the Green Bay Packers on FOX pulled in 47.7 million viewers.
That figure makes it the most-watched early Thanksgiving game ever recorded. It was up 27% from the previous year. It proves that when Detroit is competitive, they are one of the most fun watches in the league. Even the nightcap, Bengals vs. Ravens on NBC, drew a massive 28.4 million viewers, proving that even by dessert time, fans weren’t tired of football.
Football’s Stranglehold On Entertainment
What these numbers tell us is that the NFL is operating in a completely different stratosphere than the rest of the entertainment world.
Roger Goodell mentioned in a statement that Thanksgiving and football have become synonymous, and he’s right. The average viewership across all three games was 44.7 million, the highest average on record dating back to 1988. Even digital streaming is surging, with an average minute audience of 2.2 million, a 58% jump from last year.
In an era where TV audiences are fractured and streaming services are fighting for scraps, the NFL remains the last true monoculture. Since the start of the 2025 season, NFL games account for 48 of the top 50 shows on television. It is not just a sport anymore; it is the only appointment viewing left in America.
