{"id":5478,"date":"2024-11-09T08:59:18","date_gmt":"2024-11-09T08:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=5478"},"modified":"2024-11-09T08:59:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-09T08:59:18","slug":"have-the-chiefs-supplanted-the-cowboys-as-americas-top-tv-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=5478","title":{"rendered":"Have the Chiefs supplanted the Cowboys as America\u2019s top TV team?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

<\/p>\n

Cris Collinsworth made a notable, bluntly honest quip last year about NFL broadcast scheduling that got a lot of attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf NBC had their choice, we would do 17 Dallas Cowboys games,\u201d the NBC \u201cSunday Night Football\u201d analyst told \u201cThe Dan Patrick Show.\u201d\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m not kidding. It doesn\u2019t even matter what their record is. They could be 4-6, we would take them. \u2018You guys can take any game you want this week.\u2019 \u2018OK, we\u2019ll take the Dallas Cowboys.\u2019 It\u2019s insanity, but it\u2019s true. They draw the ratings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historically, this is unquestionably true. The Cowboys have been the NFL\u2019s viewership bell cow for decades, and there\u2019s a reason every network lobbies the league\u2019s broadcasting department for as many Cowboys games as possible. Take this year\u2019s schedule: The Cowboys have six prime-time slots for 2o24 as well as five weeks where they anchor Fox\u2019s late-afternoon Sunday window, a late-afternoon Thanksgiving Day game (against the New York Giants) on Fox, and a game coming Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles that anchors CBS\u2019 late-afternoon window.<\/p>\n

But the Cowboys are struggling, with a middling 3-5 record and starting quarterback Dak Prescott\u00a0looking at multiple weeks on the sidelines. They are hardly a compelling watch at the moment outside of seeing how long the slide continues.<\/p>\n

So stay with me for a moment as I argue that the Kansas City Chiefs, and not the Cowboys, deserve the title of \u201cAmerica\u2019s Team\u201d as far as a network viewership play in the near term. In some ways, the change might have happened already as the NFL selected the Chiefs for its newest deep-pocketed partners \u2014 Amazon\u2019s Black Friday game (against the Las Vegas Raiders) and one of Netflix\u2019s Christmas games (against the Pittsburgh Steelers).<\/p>\n

For example, let\u2019s take a look at the 10 most-watched games this year, per the NFL:<\/p>\n

1. Chiefs<\/strong>\u2013Baltimore Ravens (Week 1): 29.2 million viewers on NBC
\n2. Cincinnati Bengals\u2013Chiefs<\/strong> (Week 2): 27.9 million viewers on CBS
\n3. Cowboys<\/strong>-Ravens (Week 3): 27.3 million viewers on Fox
\n4. Chiefs<\/strong>\u2013San Francisco 49ers (Week 7): 27.1 million viewers on Fox
\n5. Chiefs<\/strong>\u2013Atlanta Falcons (Week 3): 25.1 million viewers on NBC
\n6. Chicago Bears\u2013Washington Commanders (Week 5) (airing in 51 percent of country); Chiefs<\/strong>-Raiders (airing in 41 percent of country): 25 million viewers on CBS
\n7. Detroit Lions\u2013Green Bay Packers (Week 9): 24.2 million viewers on Fox
\n8. Los Angeles Chargers\u2013Chiefs<\/strong> (Week 4): 24.2 million viewers on CBS
\n9. Cowboys<\/strong>-Lions (Week 6): 24.1 million viewers on Fox
\n10. Cleveland Browns\u2013Cowboys<\/strong> (Week 1): 23.9 million viewers on Fox<\/p>\n

For a quick comparison, here were the five most-watched NFL regular-season games, excluding Thanksgiving, in 2022 \u2014 when the Cowboys went 12-5 and earned a wild-card spot in the playoffs:<\/p>\n

1. Cowboys<\/strong>-Packers (Week 10): 29.2 million viewers on Fox
\n2. Cowboys<\/strong>-Eagles (Week 16): 27.8 million viewers on Fox
\n3. Cowboys<\/strong>\u2013Minnesota Vikings (Week 11): 27.7 million viewers on CBS
\n4. Bengals-Cowboys<\/strong> (Week 2): 27.4 million viewers on CBS
\n5. Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Packers (Week 3): 26.4 million viewers on Fox<\/p>\n

Look at all the Chiefs games in this year\u2019s top six. The team\u2019s recent run \u2014 four Super Bowl appearances in the last five years and a 59-16 record since the start of the 2020 season \u2014 has prompted the NFL to place them in high-profile windows. They were the primary reason CBS finished last year with its most-watched season since 1998 (an average of 19.3 million viewers) and how CBS edged out Fox (24.64 million to 24.62 million) in the 2023 late-afternoon window battle.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"Have<\/p>\n

\n

Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs\u2019 season-opener against the Ravens is the highest-rated game of the NFL season so far. (Christian Petersen \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This year, CBS has seven Chiefs games, NBC has four (including three prime-time games), ESPN has two, Fox has one, Netflix has one, and Prime Video has one. There is an open game Week 18 against the Broncos that will likely head to a big window. Kansas City plays five times in the late-afternoon slot, the most valuable real estate on television.<\/p>\n

Management at all these networks should be advocating heavily for the Chiefs above all other teams, including the Cowboys, for their 2025 schedule. Dallas will still get its heavy share of prime-time games and high-profile windows, but the Chiefs will end up with higher-profile windows, including (just a hunch here) more than one game on Fox.<\/p>\n

But William Mao, the senior vice president of global media rights consulting at Octagon, says, well, not so fast, cowboy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the Cowboys are still a big draw, so if you\u2019re asking whether they will continue to consistently be, as you called it, the network\u2019s No. 1 pick, it remains to be seen,\u201d Mao said. \u201cDo the Chiefs as a dynasty change things, and particularly at this moment in time given they are undefeated? The counterpoint is there was another dynasty before the Chiefs in the (New England) Patriots, a long dynasty with multiple championships. I don\u2019t recall during that period of time there was a thought that they would supplant the Cowboys from a pick and flexing perspective on the scheduling. There is something to be said about longstanding brand building and the brand value of teams as opposed to just kind of how someone did the prior season. Generally speaking, the Cowboys are usually on in pretty much the entire country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mao asked analysts at Octagon\u2019s sister agency, Futures Sport & Entertainment, which looks at international media monitoring and has done measurement work for the NFL, to provide a global look at where the Cowboys remain in the age of the Chiefs. He said the findings came back that the Cowboys remain the NFL\u2019s most popular team.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross all the markets that Futures monitors, the Cowboys remain the top NFL team in popularity regardless of their results,\u201d Mao said. \u201cThere\u2019s brand value to them that is a little bit immune to the week-to-week performance and record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both of us are in agreement that Kansas City will be the bigger television draw down the stretch given the current trajectories and the fact the Chiefs are on a historical run. What was interesting from Mao is that he observed that the Chiefs, given all their success and prominent star players such as Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, benefit from hate-watching. (They do have a famous fan who famously sings about how the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.)<\/p>\n

\u201cFandom has two edges to it,\u201d Mao said. \u201cThere is this notion of I love this team because they are playing well or they have these star players. There\u2019s also the negative side of fandom, which is we watch them because we want to see if they\u2019ll lose, or because we hate them. I think the Chiefs benefit from both of those in the same way the Patriots once did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cowboys have long been the golden goose for NFL TV viewership. But the dynastic Chiefs might be the new “America’s Team” for ratings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[302,15,30,303],"class_list":["post-5478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-nfl","tag-sports-business"],"yoast_head":"\nHave the Chiefs supplanted the Cowboys as America\u2019s top TV team? - News 365<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=5478\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Have the Chiefs supplanted the Cowboys as America\u2019s top TV team? - News 365\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Cowboys have long been the golden goose for NFL TV viewership. 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