Thanksgiving Day is well-known for two things in America, and they are eating and football. The NFL hosts three games each year on Thanksgiving, with the Dallas Cowboys being one of the teams who plays each year on the holiday. This year they hosted the Las Vegas Raiders, which turned out to be the most-watched regular season game since 1990. It was estimated that there were 38.5 million viewers tuned in for the big game, which is mightily impressive. Some factors that likely went into this large number are that the Cowboys are historically the league’s most watched team, as well as the Raiders also being a popular team, historically. Also, the game was highly competitive, as it was a narrow matchup and also went into overtime.
This story interests me because as a football fan, this was definitely an interesting matchup that I was excited for, but I was not aware of the amount of people that also thought it was an interesting matchup. There have been bigger games with interesting matchups in the past 31 years, but they were not able to draw in the same number of viewers. The face that it was Thanksgiving could have played a role because even people who are not interested in football may watch the games on Thanksgiving as part of the holiday tradition. While many people often ridicule the league for many of the things they do and even threaten to stop watching games, the league remains powerful and dominant across televisions in America.
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