ESPN & CBS Tie For Best Week 17 NFL Audience With Cowboys, Chiefs Victories

ESPN and CBS went head to head for the biggest audience during Week 17 of the NFL regular season. Both delivered around 26.1M viewers, marking a milestone for the NFL as the league has now seen more than double the games cross the 25M threshold as last year (when only nine had met that mark by this time).

Monday Night Football — which actually aired on Saturday to give deference to college football on Monday — delivered its second consecutive week of an audience over 26M viewers for the controversial contest between the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys. Related Stories Late Night TV Pat McAfee Addresses Aaron Rodgers' Jeffrey Epstein List Claims: "I Can See Why Jimmy Kimmel Felt The Way He Felt" Below The Line 2023 24 Awards Season Calendar Dates For Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, Tonys, Guilds & More That game joins the Eagles Chiefs (November 22) and Ravens 49ers (December 25) from this season as the three most watched MNF games since 1997.

The current season is now officially the most watched MNF season of the ESPN era (2006 – present), averaging 17.1 million viewers. The television franchise is up 33% year over year. CBS was up 6% versus last year with its audience for the Bengals Chiefs, marking the most watched Week 17 game window in 12 years.

Earlier in the day, the Dolphins Ravens matchup on CBS posted the biggest audience for a Week 17 regional game window since 1998 with nearly 18M tuning in. That’s up 23% from last year to be the fourth most watched game of the week. NBC’s Sunday Night Football telecast of the Packers win over the Vikings slid into third with 18.14M viewers tuning in.

On Fox, the Steelers Seahawks managed 15.5M viewers. Thursday Night Football on Prime Video once again came in at the bottom of the pack, though it was the 14th game (out of 15) this season to mark an increased audience over last year. Just over 10M people tuned in to watch the Cleveland Browns take on the New York Jets..