The Most-Watched NFL Game Ever: CBS Just Made History

Football owns the screen. CBS Sports says its Thanksgiving broadcast of the Cowboys Chiefs matchup has set a new television record. It's now the most watched regular NFL game in American history. Nielsen data shows the game averaged more than 57 million viewers and peaked above 61 million as Dallas edged Kansas City 31 to 28. Paramount also recorded its biggest NFL streaming audience ever. This is not a one off. In recent seasons, live sports and especially the NFL have completely dominated American television. In a recent year, more than 90 of the hundred most watched broadcasts are, believe it or not, NFL games or NFL related shows. The old cultural landmarks such as the MASH series finale. I remember that I watched it. That drew more than 100 million viewers in 1983. Those have been replaced these days by football games almost every week. If you want to see what actually unites the American audience in real time, you don't look at cable news or scripted entertainment. You look at the NFL schedule. So what's the real message here? CBS and the NFL, they're bragging about how their shows are the most watched shows on TV. They just had 57 million people watch a football game. And yet these are the very same people who say, oh, I'm so poor. Give me billions of dollars to build a stadium that I can use for a few years and then sell you out to go to another city. This is ridiculous. You can't be the most successful, most watched, most profitable thing ever and then cry poor looking for tax handouts. Okay, this is. Let's go a little deeper. This is a pet peeve of mine. And it's not just professional sports, as we'll talk about in an upcoming segment. It's college sports too. Feasting at the public trough, being piggies with public tax money directly and indirectly. So again, the facts, the the broadcasts peaks. About 61 million people were watching this most recent show and a lot of people like it. Look, have I ever watched a football game? Yes, I do typically like to watch Super Bowl. I enjoy the commercials and the halftime specials and then I go to bed before the second half starts. That's just me. You're not a bad person if you love watching professional football. And for those of you watching in India and the rest of the world, when I say football, I'm talking about the American style. And to quote, to paraphrase George Will, he says American football embodies the absolute worst of American culture. It's lots and lots of committee meetings punctuated by short bouts of violence. So it's not the continuous action of rugby or Soccer, it's basically stopping and looking at people sitting around, huddled around, talking most of the time. But there is lots of violence, there's broken bones, occasionally really serious injuries. And I guess a lot of people like that. It's a big world. Not really my thing, but a lot of people like it. There are some statistics here that are fascinating to me because you've heard me and others bemoan how traditional broadcast networks are losing all of their audiences. People aren't watching news anymore on broadcast TV or even cable. They're not watching sitcoms. This is the one exception. Live sports in general and live football in particular. So I do get it in the sense that it's suspenseful. When you're watching a live show, you can't just fast forward. You can't just read the review on Rotten Tomatoes and find out if it was a good game. You have to be watching live. And that's what is attracting people. And advertisers are willing to pay for it. The advertiser in the super bowl pay millions and millions of dollars for every 30 second commercial. So for now we're going to see the biggest communications companies and the biggest tech companies continue to bid and outbid each other for the rights to these games. So if you own a football team or, well, congratulations, you were probably born wealthy, but you're definitely a billionaire before you ever bought a team. And you're only going to get richer because of how all of the spoils of this league are shared. Some would say in a kind of a form of socialism, the way revenues are split among owners in the NFL. But they're making tons of money. Good for them. Not my form of entertainment. That's okay, you, it's a big world. But I do resent this constant rubbing in the face of look how popular we are. Look how good our ratings are. Look how much money we make, TV networks and oh, by the way, we're too cheap to pay for our own place of business, the football stadium. So you sucker, I mean you fans in these various cities have got to buy and pay for our stadium. That is socialism. But it's socialism for the wealthy. I'm an honest conservative of sorts on some issues. I actually believe that most economic decisions, most industries should be in the private sector unless there is an overwhelming compelling reason for it to be controlled by the government. I don't want the private sector deciding where stoplights go. I want government, one government entity to do that. I want one government entity to plan a federal highway system. Okay. I do want federal government to be involved in certain industries like public schools or the state government, local government. But why in the world we need government handouts for a private sector business where if it disappeared tomorrow, there would be no discernible problem for society. And if it didn't disappear, if just every one of these subsidies disappeared, tax breaks, tax advantages, out and out, subsidies for football stadiums. If they all disappeared tomorrow, what's the worst that could happen? A football coach somehow gets by on $15 million a year instead of 20 million a year. A billionaire owner has to sell his team for $2 billion profit instead of a 3 billion dollar profit because he had to spend a billion on his own state. Is that really so bad? I don't think so.