Fox News averaged 2.5 million viewers between 9pm and 11pm ET on Wednesday, the two-hour block that carried Donald Trump’s opening address to the Republican midterm convention at American Airlines Center in Dallas. On NBC the same night, the Super Bowl LX rematch between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots kicked off the 2026 NFL season. Seattle won 13-10 on a Drew Lock comeback drive.
Trump told supporters the opposite. In a Truth Social post the next morning, he described the convention as “a major, sold out hit, far bigger, better, and more important than anyone thought possible” and said it had drawn “really big numbers, despite going up against the NFL.”
“The overall numbers beat the NFL,” he wrote.
A second post claimed the American Airlines Center “beat its own attendance records” and that “thousands of people outside … couldn’t get in.”
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Below Gutfeld in the same slot
Trump’s 10pm ET hour on Fox News drew 2.50 million viewers and 221,000 in the 25-54 demographic, Mediaite reported. Both figures came in below the summer average of Gutfeld!, the network’s late-night comedy show, which pulled 2.51 million viewers and 255,000 in the demo during August.
Fox still won the cable night. CNN averaged 441,000 viewers in the same window and MSNBC drew 1 million, according to the same Nielsen tallies.
NBC had not published Wednesday’s NFL Kickoff Game figures as of Thursday, Raw Story noted. The 2025 opener averaged 28.3 million viewers across platforms and the 2024 opener 29.2 million, both several multiples of any cable news audience the same evening.
Enten runs the math on CNN
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten walked through the ratings claim live on air on Thursday, dismissing the head-to-head programming as ill-conceived and arguing that Republicans were spending prime-time speaking hours on voters already the most motivated to turn out.
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Grant Stern, executive editor of Occupy Democrats, wrote on X.
“The NFL kicked off last night, and Donald Trump ranted, raved, lied, and begged for votes last night, which was pretty boring.”
Skepticism about the calendar predated the event. MeidasTouch News’s Scott MacFarlane called the plan “bonkers” on air last week, asking who would tune in to a political convention against the debut of the NFL season.
The NFL’s Thursday night Week 1 game, the San Francisco 49ers against the Los Angeles Rams from Melbourne, kicked off at 8:35pm ET on Netflix.
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