Have the Chiefs displaced the Cowboys as America’s best TV team?

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Have the Chiefs displaced the Cowboys as America’s best TV team?

Cris Collinsworth made a remarkable, downright honest joke about the NFL broadcast schedule last year that got a lot of attention.

“If NBC had the choice, we would do 17 Dallas Cowboys games,” says the NBC Sunday Night Football analyst. told “The Dan Patrick Show.” ‘I’m not kidding. It doesn’t even matter what their record is. It could be 4-6, we would take them. “You can play any game you want this week.” “Okay, we’ll take the Dallas Cowboys.” It’s madness, but it’s true. They determine the viewing figures.”

Historically speaking, this is undoubtedly true. The Cowboys have been the NFL’s viewership cow for decades, and there’s a reason why every network lobbies the league’s broadcasting department for as many Cowboys games as possible. Take this year’s schedule: the Cowboys have six prime-time slots for 2024 and five weeks in which they anchor Fox’s late-afternoon Sunday afternoon window, a late-afternoon Thanksgiving Day game (against the New York Giants) on Fox, and a game next Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles, which anchors CBS’ late afternoon window.

But the Cowboys are struggling, with a mediocre 3-5 record and starting quarterback Dak Prescott looking at several weeks on the sidelines. They’re hardly a compelling watch at this point, other than seeing how long the decline continues.

So stick with me for a moment while I argue that the Kansas City Chiefs, not the Cowboys, deserve the title of “America’s Team” as far as short-term network viewership plays. In some ways, the change might have already happened when the NFL selected the Chiefs for its latest deep-pocketed partners: Amazon’s Black Friday game (against the Las Vegas Raiders) and one of Netflix’s Christmas games (against the Pittsburgh Steelers ).

For example, let’s take a look at the 10 most watched games this year, according to the NFL:

1. Leaders–Baltimore Ravens (Week 1): 29.2 million viewers on NBC
2. Cincinnati Bengals–Leaders (Week 2): 27.9 million viewers on CBS
3. Cowboys-Ravens (Week 3): 27.3 million viewers on Fox
4. Leaders–San Francisco 49ers (Week 7): 27.1 million viewers on Fox
5. Leaders–Atlanta Falcons (Week 3): 25.1 million viewers on NBC
6. Chicago Bears – Washington Commanders (Week 5) (broadcast in 51 percent of the country); Leaders-Raiders (aired in 41 percent of the country): 25 million viewers on CBS
7. Detroit Lions – Green Bay Packers (Week 9): 24.2 million viewers on Fox
8. Los Angeles Chargers–Leaders (Week 4): 24.2 million viewers on CBS
9. Cowboys-Lions (Week 6): 24.1 million viewers on Fox
10.Cleveland Browns–Cowboys (Week 1): 23.9 million viewers on Fox

For a quick comparison, here were the five most-watched regular-season NFL games, excluding Thanksgiving, in 2022 – when the Cowboys went 12-5 and earned a wild-card spot in the playoffs:

1. Cowboys-Packers (Week 10): 29.2 million viewers on Fox
2. Cowboys-Eagles (Week 16): 27.8 million viewers on Fox
3. Cowboys–Minnesota Vikings (Week 11): 27.7 million viewers on CBS
4. Bengal-Cowboys (Week 2): 27.4 million viewers on CBS
5. Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Packers (Week 3): 26.4 million viewers on Fox

Take a look at all the Chiefs games in the top six this year. The team’s recent run — four Super Bowl appearances in the last five years and a 59-16 record since the start of the 2020 season — has prompted the NFL to put them in high-profile windows. They were the main reason CBS finished last year with its most-watched season since 1998 (19.3 million average viewers) and how CBS defeated Fox (24.64 million to 24.62 million) in the 2023 late-afternoon battle.

Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ season opener against the Ravens is the highest-rated game of the NFL season so far. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

This year, CBS has seven Chiefs games, NBC has four (including three prime-time games), ESPN has two, Fox has one, Netflix has one and Prime Video has one. There is an open game in Week 18 against the Broncos that will likely go to a big window. Kansas City plays five times in the late afternoon slot, the most valuable real estate on television.

Management at all of these networks should heavily argue for the Chiefs over all other teams, including the Cowboys, for their 2025 schedule. Dallas will still get its fair share of primetime games and high-profile windows, but the Chiefs will end up with more prominent windows, including (just a hunch) more than one game on Fox.

But William Mao, the senior vice president of Global Media Rights Consulting at Octagon, says: Well, not so fast, cowboy.

“I think the Cowboys are still a big draw, so if you’re wondering if they’ll consistently remain, as you put it, the network’s No. 1 pick, it remains to be seen,” Mao said. “Do the Chiefs as a dynasty change things, especially right now since they are undefeated? The counterpoint is that before the Chiefs in the (New England) Patriots, there was another dynasty, a long dynasty with multiple championships. I don’t recall there being any thought during that period that they would replace the Cowboys from a picky scheduling perspective. There’s something to be said about long-term brand building and team brand equity, as opposed to how someone did it last season. In general, the Cowboys tend to have a presence pretty much all over the country.

Mao asked analysts from Octagon’s sister agency Futures Sport & Entertainment, which looks at international media monitoring and has done measurement work for the NFL, to provide a global view of where the Cowboys remain in the Chiefs era. He said the findings showed the Cowboys remain the NFL’s most popular team.

“Across all markets Futures monitors, the Cowboys remain the top NFL team in terms of popularity, regardless of their results,” Mao said. “They have a brand value that is a little bit immune to the performance and record from week to week.”

We both agree that Kansas City will be the biggest television draw given current developments and the fact that the Chiefs are on a historic trajectory. What was interesting from Mao is that he noted that the Chiefs, given all their success and prominent star players like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, are profiting from hate speech. (They do have a famous fan who famously sings about how the haters are gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.)

“Fandom has two sides,” Mao said. “There is the idea that I like this team because they play well or because they have star players. There is also the negative side of fandom: we watch them because we want to see if they will lose, or because we hate them. I think the Chiefs benefit from both, the same way the Patriots once did.