The Alliance of American Football was a ratings winner in its inaugural weekend, but founder Charlie Ebersol realizes it is a small sample size.

“We feel really good about them and that our theory that Americans want more football tends to be true,” Ebersol said in a phone interview. “However, we still have to remain slow and steady in building things. We are going to be facing stiff competition as soon as next month (with the NCAA Tournament).”

The games Saturday on CBS averaged 3.25 million viewers, which was more than ABC’s broadcast of the Houston Rockets against the Oklahoma City Thunder (2.67 million), according to Nielsen. Most of the country could see San Diego at San Antonio while the rest could see Atlanta at Orlando.

The AAF ratings are comparable to the 3.32 million viewers that CBS averaged for a pair of NFL preseason games last August. However, the broadcasts Saturday from San Antonio and Orlando will be the only games on CBS until the championship game on April 27 in Las Vegas.

NFL Network will have the games on Saturday and Sunday nights while the CBS Sports Network has the Sunday afternoon game. TNT will be doing the game from Birmingham next Saturday afternoon, but the next eight weeks it will be streamed on B/R Live.

The broadcast Sunday night on NFL Network averaged 640,000 viewers. Many observers will be following the NFL Network numbers over the next couple weeks since the rest of the games will be on cable.

Most of the production is being done from Sneaky Big studios in Scottsdale, Arizona. Pregame, halftime and postgame shows will be done from the facility and some games are being announced remotely.

All the games the first week had the same graphics packages and production elements, which have given the broadcasts consistency.