Virtually no one watched from the stands in Santa Clara, California, as the 49ers took on the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday Night Football. As it turns out, virtually no one watched on television either.
The 49ers, and the ratings, fell on Sunday night as the broadcast which featured Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth in masks took the heaviest ratings hit of any NFL weekend broadcast window.
According to Sports Media Watch:
NBC’s Sunday Night Football posted the biggest decline of the weekend, with Eagles-49ers down 39% in ratings (to 8.4) and 37% in viewership (to 15.08M). Keep in mind that last year’s comparable Cowboys-Saints game — NBC’s highest rated and most-watched of the season — faced extremely limited competition. The top competing sportscast, an 8 PM ET SportsCenter on ESPN, averaged 317,000. By contrast, this year’s game faced an NBA Finals game that averaged nearly six million viewers.
Philadelphia’s win posted the lowest Sunday Night Football rating since Week 8 in 2018 (Saints-Vikings: 8.3), but the smallest audience in less than a year — since Week 6 of last season (Steelers-Chargers: 14.89M).
Game 3 of the NBA Finals did indeed go up against Sunday Night Football, however, it was the lowest rated Finals game in NBA history. In fact, SNF probably stole far more viewers from Game 3, than the other way around.
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