Although not many things are worse than the New York Giants, there are still worse items. Thursday’s main training is one instance, turkey may be the squealing essence of a sort of Tebow-esque awfulness, but that’s only when it’s not trying to kill you. E. bacteria and bacteria often lurk in the store-bought parrots, while their free-range, free-love nation cousins are riddled with insect chlamydiosis and lungs fungus. With his neck hanging a dark ear-lobey object, a hale and hearty bird are also invincible.
Despite all of that, 80 million Americans will travel far and wide this week to participate in the collective supper of ritual mediocrity. The late-afternoon NFL gameup will be about as appealing as a Jell-O salad, and the majority of these street soldiers will leave the field to see the Giants take on the Dallas Cowboys in the House that Jerry Built. That’s how beliefs work. We do things we do n’t always enjoy, because some people, now long dead, thought it was a good idea when they were still calling the shots. Fox can take comfort in knowing that the NFL’s 57-year tradition is just as important to the holiday as cranberry sauce, even if the possibility of a 4-7 Dallas team playing host to a 2-9 Giants squad does n’t necessarily make the neural pleasure centers tingle. You will watch because: a ) there’s nothing else on, and b ) even sub-par football is still, well, football. Witness next year’s core match, a 45-10 Cowboys blow of their NFC East foes from the nation’s money. While hardly something you’d stand in the Louvre, CBS ‘ spread gobbled up an average pick of 41.8 million people, making it the NFL’s second-biggest regular-season activity. As in, previously. These eye-popping sales were stifled by a change in Nielsen’s house-counting system because of their traditions and habits only. The addition of home deliveries to the$ 80 billion TV ad market in September 2020 has resulted in legions of ghost fans who have long been unaccounted for by the service that provides the transactional data necessary for the$ 80 billion TV ad market. As much as “out-of-home” sales are generally associated with the extra eyeballs that collect in public venues such as bars, restaurants, gyms and other public venues, Nielsen’s convenient data-harvesting technology also allows it to determine popularity that occurs in other people’s residences. The OOH change has thus completely altered how advertisers view the NFL’s annual Thanksgiving meal. For example, out-of-home deliveries accounted for 17.3 million of CBS ‘ overall Commanders-Cowboys audience in 2023, or more than two-fifths ( 41 % ) of the network’s gametime reach. Eliminate those impressions as a sort of pre-2020 thought exercise, and the turnout for last year’s showcase drops to 24.5 million viewers, and while that’s still a solid number—the average primetime entertainment series draws just 3.54 million per episode—it certainly would n’t justify the rates advertisers pay for each in-game unit. And none of those rates have ever been higher. The average unit cost for the three Thanksgiving Day games on CBS, Fox, and NBC is nearly$ 1.5 million per 30-second spot, according to advance booking data from Guideline, which tracks actual agency investment from the six major U.S. holding companies as well as the majority of the large independent retailers. That marks a 16 % increase from last season’s rates. Guideline does not publicly disclose the individual network’s rates, despite Fox’s broadcast being the priciest Turkey Day purchase. The key rightsholders of the NFL can expect to receive around$ 570 million in ad revenue when Amazon Prime’s Black Friday stream and the Sunday lineup of broadcasts are thrown into the holiday mix. ( The average rate for a single unit across this Sunday’s NFL slate is a hearty$ 576, 000 a throw, up 11 % versus the year-ago period. ) The turnout for the other two games should be impressive in addition to Fox’s holiday showcase, which is expected to draw the most viewers. The first NFC North grudge matchup between the best team in the league and the head of the third-largest media market, CBS has the Bears and Lions teed up for the early window. ( Chicagoland is home to 3.7 million TV households, accounting for nearly 3 % of the national base. ) Last year’s Packers-Lions game averaged 31.7 million viewers on Fox, good for second place on the season. NBC, for its part, will be raking it in all the livelong day, commanding an average unit cost of$ 900, 000 for its broadcast of the 97th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ( last year’s event averaged 22.3 million linear-TV viewers ) before settling in for a little dog show action ahead of the main event in primetime. Including the 1.6 million streaming impressions garnered via Peacock, NBC’s coverage of the one-sided 49ers-Seahawks capper averaged just shy of 27 million viewers, this year’s matchup features a rare meeting between Tua Tagovailoa’s Miami Dolphins and Jordan Love’s Green Bay Packers. A product of the fearsome NFC north, the 8-3 Pack are a virtual shoo-in for a Wild Card berth. All told, the NFL’s TV partners have boosted their total in-game ad revenue by 10 % versus the year-ago period, while ratings are up 1 %. Last season’s spend was up 14 % on a 7 % hike in deliveries. ” Thanksgiving weekend highlights the unmatched value of sports in video advertising”, said Alberto Leyes, head of product strategy at Guideline. Advertisers see this holiday as a prime opportunity for massive reach and engagement despite double-digit growth in unit rates because the NFL controls nearly 70 % of national TV. Live sports continues to power the TV ad market, which dipped 3 % in 2023. In comparison to the prior year, sports spending increased 21 % while entertainment spending decreased 16 %. As long as Americans continue to abide by the over-the-river-and-through-the-woods travel dynamic, there will always be an outsized audience for football on the fourth Thursday in November. As long as we keep the old customs alive, the NFL will continue to be a cultural touchstone until the turkeys rise up and slaughter us all until the sun burns itself out, or perhaps Grandmother moved to Rhode Island without telling anyone, and perhaps some rude strangers live there now. There is no imminent threat of an avian revolt, according to scientists, who claim that the latter is unlikely to occur for another 5 billion years. However, turkeys are the most stupid animals on earth, according to Giants fans ( like me ).