Kansas City Chiefs vs. Denver Broncos on Thursday night had some big appeal across the viewing platforms.
You can watch “Thursday Night Football” games this season on a variety of different platforms, including Fox, NFL Network, Fox Deportes, NFL Digital, Fox Sports digital, Amazon Prime Video, Twitch and Yahoo Sports. All platforms combined for 14.4 million viewers — a 53% increase from the Thursday night game in Week 7 a season ago, according to an NFL press release.
The average viewership for “Thursday Night Football” is up in general by 21% compared to the 2018 season, with an average of 16.3 million viewers per week. Digital streaming is a big part of this — numbers for NFL Digital, Fox Sports Digital, Amazon Prime Video, Twitch, Yahoo Sports are up over 100% from last season.
On Nielsen-measured channels, Chiefs vs. Broncos had an 8.3 household rating. That number was also up from Week 7 a year ago.
As much as players and fans complain about Thursday night games, so long as these types of increases in viewership numbers happen, there’s little chance of any change occurring. If anything, these numbers suggest that with increased digital viewership options, more viewers are finding their way to Thursday games. Perhaps this will lead the NFL to an expanded catalog of digital viewing options for games beyond those on Thursday night.
