Brady’s return leads NBC to strong Sunday football ratings

NEW YORK » Tom Brady wins in the television ratings, too.

NBC relentlessly promoted the Tampa Bay quarterback’s return to New England, and the Bucs-patriots game reached the biggest “Sunday Night Football” audience in years, the Nielsen company said.

The 26.7 million people who tuned in represented NBC’S biggest television audience for the game since 2015. Add in people who streamed it, and the game reached 28 million, the biggest “Sunday Night Football” crowd since 2012, Nielsen said.

Despite that competition, CBS’ “60 Minutes” reached 10.3 million people, its largest audience since last January. Viewership was about 12 million for the first part of the show, before the competing football game started and during the story about Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.