On Friday, the NFL received good news in the form of its Thursday Night Football regular-season matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Philadelphia Eagles averaging 14.42 million viewers across all platforms, which easily outpaced Major League Baseball’s postseason game in a head-to-head comparison.
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ nail-biting 2-1 victory over the San Francisco Giants in Game 5 drew 6.5 million viewers for TBS (an increase over Game 4’s 5.15 million watchers), and received the largest audience for an National League Division Series game since Game 5 between the Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals in 2017 (7.02 million).
Additionally for the NFL, Tampa Bay-Philadelphia reached the NFL’s second-largest digital audience ever, at 1.5 million.
Last season’s San Francisco 49ers vs. Arizona Cardinals matchup on Dec. 26 remains the high for digital audience at 4.8 million average viewers, though that mark was achieved without a traditional national broadcast — the game was only aired locally and digitally.
The 14.42 million total for Bucs-Eagles was up 14 percent from last season’s Week 6 game between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs (12.7 million).
