CBS NFL Coverage Scores Second Straight Ratings Win: The Week in Sports Ratings

CBS’s Sunday-afternoon NFL coverage was the most watched live sports event for the second week as the sport continued dominating the ratings charts.

CBS’s October 29 slate of early games — in which most of the country saw the San Francisco 49ers-Cincinnati Bengals contest — drew 26.05 million viewers, finishing as the second most-watched NFL window of the season, according to Nielsen numbers published by SportsMedia Watch.

Fox’s early NFL window on Sunday drew the second-biggest audience of the week with nearly 20 million viewers, followed by NBC’s Chicago Bears-LA Chargers Sunday Night Football telecast, which averaged 15.72 million viewers. 

College football’s most-watched telecast was CBS’s Georgia-Florida matchup, which drew 5.95 million, the first time this season the top college football telecast failed to eclipse the 6 million viewer mark, according to SportsMedia Watch.

Baseball’s post-season continued to dominate the viewership of non-football telecasts. Fox’s October 27 Arizona Diamondbacks-Texas Rangers World Series Game 1 telecast drew 9.16 million viewers to top the list, although the game was the lowest-rated Game 1 on record, according to Nielsen. Game 2 of the series on October 28 finished third for the week with 8.89 million viewers, even though it was the least-watched World Series game on record, according to Nielsen.  

Overall, the five-game Arizona-Texas World Series, won by the Rangers, ended as the least-watched Fall Classic ever, with an average of 9.1 million viewers. That was down 23% from last year's six-game Philadelphia Phillies-Houston Astros series and below the previous low of 9.7 million viewers for the 2020 pandemic-influenced Los Angeles Dodgers-Tampa Bay Rays series, according to SportsBusiness Journal.  

ESPN’s October 24 Dallas Mavericks-San Antonio Spurs NBA telecast finished as the fifth most watched non-football telecast of the week, averaging nearly 3 million viewers, according to Nielsen.