The Kansas City Chiefs may be struggling some on the field, but they can still draw eyeballs for sure. According to multiple outlets, the Thanksgiving game between the Chiefs and the Dallas Cowboys was the most watched game in NFL history, and the numbers say it wasn’t particularly close.
The final audience number landed at 57.2 million, which blew away sports media experts across the board. Richard Deitsch of The Athletic is one of those experts, and he viewed this number as a perfect storm that combined three of the biggest brands in American culture—the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs and Thanksgiving.
The data for Dallas’s 31-28 victory over Kansas City combined numbers from CBS and Paramount +, according to the source Deitsch used. The previous record was 42 million, when a contest between the Cowboys and the New York Giants posted that number, which peaked at the end of the game, when 61.4 million people were tuned in.
As awesome as the Chiefs and Cowboys are when it comes to drawing viewers, the Thanksgiving factor was probably the biggest media force. Millions of people travel over the weekend, and many become a captive audience as they participate in the common ritual of watching the Cowboys game in the late window after their Thanksgiving feast.
Fox Sports director of strategy and analytics Mike Mulvihill thinks the Thanksgiving audience can still grow given the cultural communal experience, but it’s important to remember the role the game itself between the Chief and Cowboys played.
Both teams entered the contest as playoff contenders, with the Cowboys coming off back-to-back wins against the Philadelphia Eagles and Las Vegas Raiders. The Eagles win was especially impressive, especially since the Chiefs came in reeling at 6-5, and both teams definitely needed this game to boost their postseason hopes.
The offensive shootout that followed kept viewers glued to the game for far longer than usual. A lot of Thanksgiving games look intriguing on paper, but most of them don’t deliver, and this one did.
The Chiefs are always a compelling story, although many people seem to writing them off now that they’ve dropped to .500. They’re still one of the most fascinating teams in the NFL, and even if they’re not quite the draw they were when they were winning Super Bowls, they’ve still got more than enough talent and intrigue to help dominate the audience numbers on Thanksgiving.