Sports · NEWS EXPLAINER
Ravens-Cowboys Rio game draws record 24.9M viewers on CBS
CBS said Baltimore’s 34-31 win over Dallas at Maracanã Stadium averaged 24.9 million U.S. viewers, the biggest audience on record for an NFL international game.
The NFL’s first regular-season game in Rio de Janeiro became its biggest international television audience in the United States. Front Office Sports and NBC Sports both reported that CBS said Baltimore’s 34-31 win over Dallas averaged 24.9 million viewers, a record for an NFL international game. Front Office Sports also said it was CBS’s most-watched Week 3 game since 2014.
The audience arrived for a finish that matched the scale of the broadcast. Dallas tied the game with seven seconds left, Lamar Jackson completed a 27-yard pass to Zay Flowers, and Tyler Loop kicked a 56-yard field goal as time expired. A Reuters-carried Field Level Media postgame report independently confirmed the 34-31 Ravens win and the final sequence.
Why 24.9 million is a different kind of international-game record
Most NFL international games are played in windows that are less familiar to a broad U.S. Sunday audience. Front Office Sports noted that the Rio game was placed in the national late-Sunday afternoon window, a slot that traditionally draws some of the league’s largest audiences.
That scheduling context matters when comparing international games. The record says the Rio broadcast reached more U.S. viewers than previous NFL games played abroad, but it does not mean every overseas market or time slot can be expected to produce the same audience.
A seven-second finish gave viewers a reason to stay
NBC Sports tied the audience result to a game that stayed undecided until the final snap. The Cowboys pulled even at 31-31 with seven seconds remaining before Baltimore created one last scoring chance instead of settling for overtime.
NBC Sports and the Reuters-carried Field Level Media postgame report show Jackson found Flowers for 27 yards, Baltimore stopped the clock with one second left, and Loop converted from 56 yards. The sequence turned the first NFL regular-season game in Rio into a last-play result rather than a ceremonial international showcase.
What the number says—and what it does not
Front Office Sports reported that CBS was averaging 19 million viewers through three weeks, up 6% from the comparable period a year earlier. The Rio game therefore sits inside a broader strong start for the network’s NFL package, not in isolation.
Audience comparisons also depend on scheduling, teams, measurement methods and competitive programming. The useful conclusion is narrower: CBS’s reported 24.9 million made this particular Ravens-Cowboys broadcast the league’s most-watched international game on record, while the future performance of other overseas games still has to be measured separately.
