57 Million and Counting: How Thanksgiving Became the NFL’s Unofficial Super Bowl
Thanksgiving 2025 delivered the most-watched regular-season game in NFL history when 57.23 million people tuned in to watch the Chiefs face the Cowboys, shattering the previous high of 42 million set in 1993. Add the streaming peak of 61.357 million on Paramount+ and the numbers become almost absurd. What began as a quirky tradition in 1966 has quietly evolved into the closest thing the NFL has to a national holiday Super Bowl, an event no other league dares challenge and no network will ever surrender.
- Krishna Sagar
- 3 min read
The first Thanksgiving NFL broadcast aired in 1966 when the Lions hosted the 49ers. It pulled 22 million viewers, respectable for the era.
By 1993, Troy Aikman against Dan Marino on a snowy Dallas afternoon drew 42 million. In 2016, rookie Dak Prescott’s debut Thanksgiving game cracked 35 million.
Every decade the number climbs because the formula never changes - captive families, open bars, legalized gambling, and the one day a year when football owns every screen in America.
Then came November 27, 2025. The Chiefs-Cowboys showdown averaged 57.23 million on CBS and peaked at 61.357 million across all platforms. The old record did not just fall. It was obliterated. Thanksgiving football did not merely win the day. It claimed the title of the NFL’s unofficial Super Bowl.
1. The Tradition That No One Can Touch
The Lions have played on Thanksgiving every year since 1934. The Cowboys joined in 1978 after Tex Schramm realized America wanted its turkey with a side of star power.
Every other sport tried and retreated. The NBA schedules light. College basketball hides on Black Friday. The NHL barely registers.
Networks pay billions for the rights because they know the audience is literally locked in the living room with nowhere else to go. From 10 a.m. kicks to the final whistle at midnight, the NFL owns the holiday the way Coca-Cola owns Christmas.
No amount of streaming competition has dented that monopoly. In fact, 2025 proved the opposite: the more screens, the bigger the party.
2. The 2025 Thanksgiving Explosion
CBS reported 57.23 million average viewers, the highest regular-season number since Nielsen began tracking in 1987. Paramount+ alone peaked at 61.357 million concurrent streams, shattering its previous record by 40 percent.
The 18-34 demographic jumped 68 percent year-over-year. Legal sports betting handled $1.8 billion on the three Thanksgiving games, more than the entire 2020 slate combined.
Halftime performances by Post Malone and Megan Thee Stallion kept younger viewers glued through commercial breaks.
The league’s own data showed 42 percent of households with a television turned to NFL football for at least part of the day. For one Thursday in November, the NFL did not just dominate television. It became television.
3. Why Thanksgiving Wins Every Year
The math is brutal and beautiful. Families are together. Alcohol is flowing. Schools and most offices are closed the next day. Gambling apps are open on every phone. The games are scheduled perfectly: early afternoon for the casuals, prime time for the diehards.
Nostalgia seals the deal. Fathers remember watching Emmitt Smith carve up defenses with their own dads. Now their kids watch Mahomes do the same. The circle never breaks. Add legalized betting and streaming, and the ceiling keeps rising. The NFL does not have to chase the audience on Thanksgiving. The audience is already sitting on the couch, plate in hand, waiting for the league to show up.
Thanksgiving football is no longer a tradition. It is the closest thing the NFL has to a second Super Bowl, a mid-season coronation where the entire country stops, eats, drinks, bets, and watches the same three games. The 57.23 million who tuned in for Chiefs-Cowboys were not just watching a football game. They were participating in the one communal sporting event left in a fractured media world.
The Lions will play at noon next year. The Cowboys will follow. Another prime-time blockbuster will close the night. And the number will climb again, because the NFL figured out decades ago that on the fourth Thursday in November, America does not choose football. Football chooses America. And 57 million and counting is only the beginning.