It was a great game between the Cowboys and the Rams last night on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, but early ratings show a big drop from last year.
Even with the usual ratings gold of Jerry Jones’ team on the field, the NFL and NBC didn’t get that win – at least not in the early numbers. Despite two teams with big national followings, SNF snared a 4.7 in early ratings among adults 18-49 and 14.81 million viewers last night.
In numbers certain to change, that’s a fall of 28% in the demo and a hard decline of 23% in sets of eyeballs from the early numbers of the the September 8, 2019 SNF season debut.
While the early Nielsen data lacks numbers from the West Coast — kind of important when you have a team from the Los Angeles market in the mix — his result is going to be hard pill for the NFL and NBC to swallow.
To add further context, last year’s opener, a 33-3 pummeling of the Pittsburgh Steelers by then reigning Super Bowl champs the New England Patriots, went on to pull in an audience of 22.2 million on NBC, which was pretty much even with SNF’s 2018 season premiere. That 2019 figure inched up to 22.7 million when digital platform viewing was added in.
It’s clear that people aren’t watching like they used to and that’s a big deal because the Cowboys are normally a big draw, especially now that they have a legendary head coach.
But who can blame them with all of the BLM garbage and the National Anthem kneeling going around the league.
