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Tom Brady and Bill Belichick have spent the past 20 years dominating the NFL. Sunday, they saved him from five years of audience decline.
The high-profile Sunday Night Football game between the Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Belichick New England Patriots generated a total audience of 28.5 million on NBC, Peacock and other digital platforms. This is the second-highest Sunday Night Football game of all time, following the Dallas-Washington game on December 30, 2012, which drew 30.3 million people.
The total viewership on NBC alone was 27.2 million, making the game the most watched event this year aside from the February Super Bowl. Tampa Bay-New England also pulled 34 shares, meaning more than a third of all TVs used were tuned to the game. This is the highest rating ever for “Sunday Night Football” since the start. of the show in 2006.
This follows good ratings for last Thursday’s Bengals-Jaguars game, the most-watched NFL-exclusive “Thursday Night Football” game since 2018. The game’s total of 8.5 million viewers is an increase 47% from last year’s Week 4 game between the Broncos and Jets.
Bucs-Pats’ astonishing numbers seem to validate the theory that the NFL is a matchup game, and that viewers will tune in to see the branded games regardless of other entertainment options or political leanings. The NFL is now cutting an overall pie smaller, but it still gets the bigger slices.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter at @jaybusbee or contact him at [email protected].
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