Steelers-Saints in Paris generates 7.7 million on Sunday morning
· Yahoo Sports
Sunday morning football doesn't do the same numbers as Sunday afternoon or evening (or Monday night or Thursday) football, but it does better than anything else on TV at that time of day.
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The Week 7 game between the Steelers and Saints averaged 7.7 million viewers, per ESPN.
The fourth straight Sunday morning game drew the third-highest audience for any international game on NFL Network.
The four European games played in October (three in London, one in France) averaged 7.1 million viewers on NFLN.
The only problem with early-morning football (which will proliferate if/when the NFL secures the ability to stage 16 international games per year) is that it renders the Sunday morning pregame shows irrelevant. As more and more games are played at 9:30 a.m. ET, the networks may reconsider whether they even want to have pregame shows.
That said, the networks televising Sunday afternoon games need a studio presence for updates and halftimes. But the noon ET to 1:00 p.m. ET pregame shows will get smaller and smaller audiences as more and more games are played on Sunday morning.