People Really Like Pre-Season Football With Jon Kitna & J.T. O’Sullivan

For all the complaining we do about how boring NFL Preseason games are, the general apathy toward the practice games didn’t stop NBC from raking in the ratings on Sunday Night. Surely, it didn’t hurt that the Cowboys were in the game, playing against Batman and Robin. Add in the raised level of interest for this year’s HOF class and the circumstances surely added up in NBC’s favor. But these numbers are still pretty insane.

From NBC (via Fangs Bites):

The “Sunday Night Football” Hall of Fame preseason game was the most-watched Hall of Fame Game in 11 years, the most-watched NFL preseason game in nine years and the No. 1 program of the week in all the key adult and male demographics, including the coveted Adults 18-49, according to national data released today by The Nielsen Company.

The game, in which the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, 16-7, drew 11.4 million viewers, the most for a Hall of Fame Game since Aug. 9, 1999 (Cleveland-Dallas, 14.7 million).  It was also the most-watched NFL preseason game since Aug. 27, 2001 (Oakland-Dallas, 11.5 million) and was up 44 percent from last year’s game (Buffalo-Tennessee, 7.9 million).

SportsBusiness Daily (subscription link) compares the 6.8 final rating to ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball game between the Yankees and Red Sox. That telecast, per SBJ, did a 2.3 rating with 3.486 million viewers. So, the biggest rivalry in baseball got crushed in the ratings by a meaningless football scrimmage. Baseball shouldn’t be too upset, however, as the ESPN telecast got the best rating for that time slot since last year (of course, it was another Yanks-Sox game.) The baseball game also crushed in the New York market, which I’ve been told is all that matters anyway.

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