Why the NFL Is Using Thanksgiving to Expand Its Halftime Show Ambitions

The biggest entertainment program on TV isn’t NCIS, or Dancing with the Stars. It isn’t the Grammy Awards or Yellowstone, either.

No, the biggest entertainment program airs right in between the first half and the second half of the Super Bowl: The Super Bowl Halftime Show.

This year’s show, starring Rihanna, averaged 118.7 million viewers, per Nielsen.

Now, the NFL is hoping to take some of that magic and bring it to its Thanksgiving Day lineup of games. The Detroit Lions-Green Bay Packers matchup on Fox will include Jack Harlow performing during halftime. The Dallas Cowboys-Washington Commanders game on CBS will feature Dolly Parton performing during halftime. And in primetime on NBC, the Seattle Seahawks-San Francisco 49ers game will feature a halftime performance by Steve Aoki.

“When you look at what these two games do in terms of viewership — compared to anything else on television — we knew that these platforms really are unique opportunities for artists,” says Seth Dudowsky, the NFL’s head of music, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “And so over the past few years, we’ve looked at it and said, Why can’t this be the next biggest platform for us after The Super Bowl Halftime Show? We’ve seen what that show has been able to do in terms of elevating the fandom, the excitement for the Super Bowl, and so taking a similar approach for Thanksgiving Day.”

Indeed, the NFL’s Thanksgiving games are routinely the most-watched broadcasts on TV after the Super Bowl. Last year, for example, the Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game on Fox averaged 42 million viewers, the most-watched regular season game of all time. The average viewership for the three Thanksgiving games was 33.5 million, a monster number.

For a league that is laser-focused on growing at all costs , the push to carve out a bigger piece of the Thanksgiving Day traditions for itself makes a lot of sense. It also fits into a larger strategic effort to keep the league relevant among all demographics.

“Music has been a really important part of the league’s culture for decades,” Dudowsky says. “And since the beginning — but especially these past few years — we’ve certainly taken a bigger focus on not just through music, but how are we reaching younger audiences? How are we reaching more diverse audiences? We want to make sure that we’re making the game available and accessible for everybody.”

“I think we realize, especially with the fragmentation of media, the fragmentation of culture, that the NFL represents a very rare space and something that people still actually consume together,” he adds.

The halftime show is also a perk for the league’s broadcast partners, who can tease the performances or sell around them. And if the NFL is successful in turning the Thanksgiving halftime shows into an event, it could deliver big ratings at a time when people are otherwise using the bathroom, or grabbing more cranberry sauce and stuffing.

And for the artists, the opportunity to be seen by tens of millions of consumers all at once could be hard to resist.

“It’s mutually beneficial, while you’re helping us grow the Thanksgiving Day [tradition] and give audiences across the country something to come for, [the artists are] also getting the benefit of being able to get their new music and the new projects into that ecosystem,” Dudowsky says.

Indeed, both Harlow and Parton have new projects coming out (Harlow has a new single, and Parton has a new rock album called Rockstar), and Dudowsky says the league hopes to work with artists in the future with similar projects or tours to promote.

Parton told THR earlier in November that she had been offered The Super Bowl Halftime Show “many times.“

“I couldn’t do it because of other things, or I just didn’t think I was big enough to do it — to do that big of a production,” she added in the THR cover story. “When you think about those shows, those are big, big productions. I’ve never done anything with that big of a production. I don’t know if I could have. I think at the time that’s what I was thinking.”

Now she’ll have a shot at the NFL audience at a more accessible scale.

“When you start stacking it up against anything else on television — any other sporting event or award show — compared to these numbers, it stands out as a viewership opportunity for these artists,” Dudowsky says. “Not just the day itself, which clearly is after the Super Bowl the next biggest musical performance opportunity there is, but it’s also the partnership with us to involve you in the NFL ecosystem at large.”