Tip to Kuharsky, the Colts rank high in overall popularity
The Cowboys are on top in part because they’re popular to begin with. Nielsen counted the total number of viewers of a team’s national broadcasts from last season, rather than the average. So in most cases the more a team was picked to play in front of a national audience, the better it did. The Cowboys, who led the league last year with six national appearances, had a whopping 117 million viewers.
Bill Wanger, the executive vice president of programming and research at Fox Sports Media Group, says the Cowboys are among a handful of “national-appeal teams” that draw huge TV ratings no matter what market they’re broadcast in. The Cowboys also were helped in the study by the massive amount of traffic their website draws—nearly 50% more monthly unique visitors than the second-place Steelers.
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