Bears vs. Lions Made Thanksgiving Game History On Thursday

Few combinations go together better than Thanksgiving and football and this year's ratings bear that out.

Per Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the NFL had its most-watched Thanksgiving ever this year, with an average of 34.2 million viewers across its three holiday games.

The highlight though was CBS' broadcast of Bears-Lions, which drew a massive audience of 37.5 million — making it the most-watched early window Thanksgiving game on record.

Much of that had to do with the fact that the NFL owns Thanksgiving Day. But the Lions actually being good in recent years has undoubtedly given those numbers a boost.

Even with that record viewership though, Detroit was still outperformed by the Giants and Cowboys game that kicked off at 4:30 PM ET. And that's with neither team having a winning record or its starting quarterback.

FOX's 38.8 million viewers for that game made it the fourth-biggest Thanksgiving game ever, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at. But that's kind of baked in when you have legacy brands like New York and Dallas playing in holiday primetime.