Jets' Win Attracts Mega Viewership for Second Time This Season
Aaron Rodgers wasn't playing and Taylor Swift wasn't present. Neither of those circumstances, however, stopped fans from tuning into the New York Jets' win over the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 6.
In fact, the FOX broadcast of Sunday's game, which kicked off at 4:25 pm ET, attracted the highest viewership of any NFL telecast thus far this season.
According to the network, nearly 26.1 million viewers witnessed the Jets hand Philadelphia its first loss of the year. Kevin Kugler (play-by-play), former Jets' quarterback Mark Sanchez (analyst) and Laura Okmin (sidelines) were on the call at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford for the biggest television event in eight months.
"What a game, what a week!" said Sanchez in a post on the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
The Week 6 Sunday afternoon affair was the most-watched telecast of any kind on any network since Super Bowl LVII last February, but it wasn't the first time the Jets have accounted for top-flight viewership numbers this season.
The Jets' season-opening victory over the Buffalo Bills on Monday Night Football registered more than 22.6 million viewers. According to ESPN, the total represented a 15 percent increase from the 2022 MNF lid-lifter. Breaking the record set by the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers in 2009, the Jets and Bills pulled in the highest viewership number since ESPN took over the MNF franchise in 2006.
The Jets were also a notable attraction as the featured team on HBO's Hard Knocks documentary series this past summer. Despite being exclusively available through a premium subscription service, "Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the New York Jets" averaged 4.4 million viewers per episode.
According to the Warner Bros. Discovery company, it was the annual summertime docuseries' best average in 13 years. In what does not come as a surprise, the ratings last reached this level in 2010 when the Jets were featured for the first time.
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