The late-afternoon Thanksgiving NFL game featuring the Cowboys is typically the league’s most-watched regular-season contest each year. That perennial status, however, faces some new obstacles in 2024 that may at least suspend that standing. 

The 4–7 Cowboys face the 2–9 Giants at 4:30 p.m. ET on Thursday on Fox, marking one of the weakest matchups in years for the showcase holiday time slot. Even after a wild 34–26 victory over the Commanders on Sunday, Dallas is entering Thanksgiving with a roster marred by injuries and its worst record at this point since 2020. Before this season, the team reached the playoffs in four of the last six seasons and six of the last 10, remaining both one of the NFL’s most popular franchises and one of its most reliably competitive. 

Several impactful things have happened in recent months, however. In addition to the Cowboys’ precipitous slide, the team has lost its status as the NFL’s top viewership draw to the two-time defending champion Chiefs. The 10–1 Lions, meanwhile, have soared to become the betting favorite to win Super Bowl LIX, and Detroit approaches its early-afternoon Thanksgiving game against the Bears at a historical high point for the franchise.

So can the Lions in the early window attract a bigger television audience than the Cowboys in the later one? That hasn’t happened in the two daytime Thanksgiving NFL games since 2007, long before the arrival of out-of-home measurement that has reshaped viewership metrics. But there has not been as stark a juxtaposition between Dallas and Detroit in modern history. 

Over at the Meadowlands

The Giants, meanwhile, have their own malaise, having been booed off their home MetLife Stadium field on Sunday following an ugly 30–7 loss to the Buccaneers. Thursday’s game in Dallas is the same late-afternoon Thanksgiving matchup as in 2022. But that game two years ago featured two 7–3 teams that each would ultimately reach the second round of the playoffs, and the matchup drew an average audience of 42 million that remains the NFL’s most-watched regular-season game on record. 

For the 2024 holiday game, though, draft position in the spring is the truest prize on the line for the Cowboys and Giants, particularly as both teams’ starting quarterbacks are either hurt or have been released, leaving the expected matchup one of backup signal-callers: Cooper Rush and Tommy DeVito. 

Amazon Prime Video won’t get to participate in the NFL’s Thanksgiving Day tripleheader, despite paying $1 billion annually for the league’s Thursday night package. But the streamer does stand to benefit from some scheduling quirks around Turkey Day and the end of the regular season.

After Amazon gets its second go at a Black Friday game (Raiders-Chiefs at 3 p.m. ET on Prime Video), the tech giant will close out its third season exclusively streaming the NFL—which is already on record pace—with a strong slate of December games.

While CBS gets Bears-Lions to kick off the Thanksgiving Day action, and NBC airs Dolphins-Packers for the nightcap, Amazon will stream this season’s Green Bay–Detroit sequel in Week 13, as the NFC North rivals will take part in the rare, but not unprecedented, move of playing in consecutive Thursday games late in the season. (Last year, the Cowboys were featured on Thursday Night Football the week after Thanksgiving.)

Earlier this month, Lions-Packers drew a Week 9–high 24.21 million viewers on Fox, as Detroit won 24–14 in Green Bay. The Lions are tied with the Chiefs for the best record in the league at 10–1, but the Packers enter Thanksgiving just two games back, with playoff ambitions of their own.

Through 11 weeks, TNF is averaging 13.25 million viewers on Prime Video, according to Nielsen ratings, which is up 8% from the 2023 season-to-date average, and up 12% compared to last year’s full-season figure.

Flexing Its Muscle

In Week 16, Amazon will broadcast Broncos-Chargers, thanks to the NFL flexing a game out of TNF for the first time. The matchup of AFC West rivals with winning records was substituted in for the previously scheduled Browns-Bengals game, which figures to not have playoff implications as both AFC North teams are currently several games under .500.

Also in December, Amazon will get Rams-49ers and Seahawks-Bears, which should both feature at least one team still in postseason contention.

Now having reorganized itself, the United Football League is looking at expansion.

The spring football league is planning to bring in additional franchises, building on the eight current ones. The move follows a prior merger of the United States Football League and XFL that led to a debut UFL season in 2024, and more recently, the arrival of several new front-office executives in marketing, content, and communications.

There is not a specific timetable governing the process or a targeted number of franchises to add. But UFL president and CEO Russ Brandon said there will be fewer than eight additional teams, at least at the outset, and something related to expansion may be in place for the 2026 season.

“We are open for business and are very open-minded,” Brandon tells Front Office Sports. “We are taking a very holistic look at the market and everything that needs to be done to stand up a new team.”

The UFL’s debut season earlier this year saw a series of solid results, including viewership that outstripped its predecessors. Like any non-NFL pro league over the past 50 years, establishing a lasting strength in the marketplace is an uphill challenge. But Brandon said the UFL is already meeting that test.

“This is Year 2 coming up for the UFL, but Year 4, consecutively, of spring football, counting our legacy leagues,” Brandon says. “I think we’ve proven our staying power. If you look at all of our engagement, we’re clearly here for the long haul.” 

New Markets, New Brands?

As the UFL looks to expand, big pockets of the country are still open to potentially exploit, given the league’s existing base in Texas and the U.S. Southeast, including California, the Northeast, key Midwest hubs such as Chicago and Minneapolis, and the Pacific Northwest. 

The new teams could also see the arrival of entirely fresh team brands as the eight current UFL teams represent an even split between prior franchise identities from the USFL and XFL. 

The UFL, meanwhile, continues to benefit from its existing working relationship with the NFL as an incubator for that league, which involves testing a variety of innovations related to game rules and technology. Dozens of former UFL players, like Lions kicker Jake Bates, have also signed to NFL rosters. 

The 2025 UFL season will start on March 28 and conclude on June 14.