London Overrun Stalls Fox and CBS Pregame Shows in Week 5

The Eagles Jaguars London game ratings story is less about the game itself than about what it displaced. In Week 5, the Jacksonville Jaguars and Philadelphia Eagles played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and the broadcast on NFL Network ran nearly four hours, ending at 1:15 p.m. ET. By then, the early-afternoon Fox and CBS games had already kicked off, and the noon pregame shows had been squeezed.

A Long Morning in London

The delay started early. Two players were ejected during the opening kickoff, and that kickoff required a lengthy review. Penalties and reviews kept slowing the game. Cam Little eventually made a 57-yard field goal to win it, but the finish came well after the pregame windows had closed.

The previous week offered a comparison. In Week 4, the London game ended around 12:45 p.m. ET. Week 5 pushed a half-hour deeper into the early slate.

Fox: A Season Low for Kickoff

Fox NFL Kickoff averaged 1.123 million viewers in Week 5, the show’s lowest figure of the season. That was down modestly from 1.184 million in Week 4. Earlier weeks had averaged over 1.4 million.

Fox NFL Sunday drew 3.797 million, a 14% drop from the prior week. The show had opened the season at 4.967 million in Week 1, then posted 4.854 million, 4.541 million and 4.436 million in the following weeks.

CBS: A Steeper Slide for The NFL Today

The NFL Today averaged 2.818 million viewers in Week 5, down 11.5% from Week 4. Its prior weeks were 3.654 million, 3.375 million, 3.873 million and 3.183 million.

Drew Lerner of Awful Announcing raised the question of whether the ratings impact would materialize. The numbers suggest it did, with the noon shows taking larger hits than Fox NFL Kickoff.

Brazil Was a Different Story

The international slate has not been uniformly bad for the networks. CBS’s Ravens-Cowboys broadcast from Brazil averaged 24.9 million viewers, the most-watched NFL International Series game.

Still, Fox and CBS have been frustrated by the international slate, according to the source, and they have limited control over scheduling. Early European kickoffs can deflate pregame viewership when they run long.

What Remains on the International Calendar

The schedule continues. Week 6 has Texans-Jaguars in London. Week 7 has Steelers-Saints in Paris. Week 8 has no international game noted. Week 9 has another 9:30 a.m. ET kickoff. Fox acquired the Week 10 Munich game, Patriots-Lions. Week 11’s Vikings-49ers in Mexico City is NBC Sunday Night Football and ends the season’s international slate.

Whether the overrun directly caused the Week 5 declines cannot be confirmed from the numbers alone, and other factors may have played a role. But the timing was tight: the London game finished at 1:15 p.m. ET, and the pregame shows were already competing with live football.