Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen passed for 148 yards and two touchdowns, leading his team to a 35-10 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in prime-time on Sunday Night Football. With the victory, which took place after approximately 18 inches of snow buried Highmark Stadium, the Bills secured a postseason berth by clinching the AFC East division for the fifth consecutive year. The broadcast on NBC and Peacock attained a total audience delivery of 22.5 million viewers, according to data from Nielsen Media Research and Adobe Analytics, representing the second-most watched Week 13 game in the history of NBC Sunday Night Football.
Play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico, analyst Cris Collinsworth and sideline reporter Melissa Stark were on the call for the game, which was the third NFL matchup being televised by NBC in an eight-day span.
Earlier in the week, NBC Sports garnered a total audience delivery of 26.6 million viewers on NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, Universo, NBC Sports Digital and NFL Digital platforms for its Thanksgiving Day broadcast of the Miami Dolphins and Green Bay Packers. Viewership of the matchup peaked at 31.3 million viewers in the second quarter during the 9 to 9:15 p.m. EST quarter-hour. Moreover, the game collected a national NBC-TV household rating of 8.9 and a 31 share. The viewership metric marks the third consecutive NBC NFL Thanksgiving night game to surpass an average of 26 million viewers.
During halftime of the Thanksgiving game, NBC announced that Peacock would present its first alternate sports broadcast on Saturday, Dec. 21 implementing elements of the EA SPORTS Madden NFL 25 video game. The presentation will utilize data from NFL Next Gen Stats and Genius IQ and feature an on-air broadcasting team of Paul Burmeister, Kurt Benkert, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson and Henry Leverette. Steve Greenberg will produce the alternate presentation with director Geoff Butler as the company is in the midst of its second season of a 10-year media rights deal with the NFL reportedly worth $2 billion per year.
Entering Week 13, live game broadcasts of NFL action across media companies were averaging 17.5 million viewers per game, the highest metric in this category since the 2015 season. Furthermore, 47 of 50 NFL games ranked within the top-50 shows on television since the beginning of the season, excluding NFL Network international games, along with Peacock and ESPN+ broadcasts. NBCUniversal will broadcast Super Bowl LX at the conclusion of next season from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., one of three presentations of the championship game within its NFL media rights deal.
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