Been out all day. Time to catch up on a few things.
NFL Network tells us its season opening game, the earliest ever for Thursday Night Football, saw its highest audience ever for its season premiere. An average of 8.6 million people watched the Green Bay Backers dismantle the Chicago Bears at Lambeau Field on Thursday. That’s up from last year’s season opener in Week 10 between the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders by a whopping 62%. Again, a lot of this is due to increased distribution across the country.
NFL Network is crowing about Thursday Night Football being the most watched program on cable outdistancing all other shows by a wide margin.
Let’s look at the NFL Network press release.
BEARS-PACKERS ON THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL MOST-WATCHED NFL NETWORK OPENER WITH 8.6 MILLION VIEWERS
Ranks as Thursday’s No. 1 Show on Cable
NFL online & mobile traffic jumps 85 percentLast night’s Chicago Bears-Green Bay Packers game on NFL Network was watched by an average of 8.6 million viewers (not including over-the-air stations in Chicago and Green Bay/Milwaukee) – ranking as the most-watched opener in the seven seasons of Thursday Night Football.
The telecast of the 185th meeting between the teams – the most-played rivalry in NFL history – topped by 62 percent last year’s NFL Network opener between the Raiders and Chargers (5.3 million viewers). Bears-Packers was also Thursday’s most-watched program among all shows on cable doubling the viewership of the second-ranked show (“The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News Channel, 3.4 million viewers).
In addition, the Thursday Night Kickoff pregame show and Postgame Show live from the stadium, featuring host Rich Eisen and analysts Steve Mariucci, Marshall Faulk, Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin drew the best-ever averages for a TNF opener with a respective 805,000 average viewers (up 42 percent from last year’s opener) and 2.5 million average viewers (up 39 percent).
Complementary coverage of Bears-Packers online and via mobile devices drew an 85 percent jump in unique viewers and a 100 percent increase in live streams viewed over last year’s season average.
Thursday Night Football continues next week with the Super Bowl Champion New York Giants visiting the Carolina Panthers on Sept. 20 at 8:00 PM ET. The Thursday Night Kickoff pregame show begins at 6:00 PM ET. All Thursday Night Football games are available in their entirety on NFL Mobile with complementary online coverage via NFL.com/LIVE Thursday Night Football.
This year marks the seventh season of live regular season primetime games on NFL Network. Last year’s edition of Thursday Night Football was the most-watched in the network’s history with a record average of 7.3 million viewers per game (including OTAs).
That’s it for this post.
