The NFL is still king.
CBS released the broadcast ratings for the Lions-Steelers preseason game from Sunday, and it averaged 5.821 million viewers with a peak audience of 7.597 million viewers.
CBS Sports' Coverage of @Lions–@Steelers is Most-Watched @NFLonCBS Preseason Game Since 2013. pic.twitter.com/XhQ54SowF6
— CBS Sports PR (@CBSSportsGang) August 30, 2022
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio crunched the numbers and concluded that the Lions-Steelers preseason game.
The Lions-Steelers preseason game on Sunday afternoon did better than each of the five NBA games from Christmas 2021. https://t.co/KWgpKhvOeg
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) August 30, 2022
Those numbers can be compared to all sorts of audience figures from other sports at other times. Here’s a fascinating nugget. The Sunday-afternoon-in-late-August audience surpassed the average audience for each of the five Christmas Day NBA games played in 2021.
Hawks-Knicks at noon ET? 2.924 million average viewers. Celtics-Bucks at 2:29 p.m. ET drew 4.933 million. Warriors-Suns, with a 5:13 p.m. ET tip, got 5.189 million. Nets-Lakers, starting at 8:00 p.m. ET, had 5.753 million. Finally, Mavs-Jazz did 1.519 million.
Fans reacted to the NFL’s dominance over the NBA.
No surprise, Christmas NBA games are overhyped. Glad NFL finally scheduled games on Christmas again.
https://twitter.com/CantGuardJeudy/status/1564797242418102275
nba needs more variety or something. time to switch it up. we get tired of watching the SAME team every year
nba needs more variety or something. time to switch it up. we get tired of watching the SAME team every year https://t.co/9IUPoWlkth
— devin (@Nolimitdevvo) August 30, 2022
NFL is king… and its not even close
NFL is king… and its not even close https://t.co/nd20df20xo
— Bobby Carpenter (@Bcarp3) August 30, 2022
Nfl is still king. When a preseason game is doing better than other sports prime slots no question who is at the top of the mountain
Nfl is still king. When a preseason game is doing better than other sports prime slots no question who is at the top of the mountain https://t.co/gvRAQksCmW
— Ruben Almada (@Superflexdegen) August 30, 2022