It’s always been a foregone conclusion that the novelty surrounding ESPN2’s ManningCast could evaporate eventually. And while the alternative Monday Night Football telecast featuring Peyton and Eli Manning still pulls in a sizable audience and can make viral moments happen, it feels like this is the season where that novelty has really started to rub off.
The ManningCast debuted on September 13, 2021, with 800,000 viewers but the virality quickly saw that number rise. Audiences peaked on November 1, 2021, when 1.96 million viewers watched Peyton and Eli break down the game between the New York Giants and Kansas City Chiefs.
Those numbers have fluctuated in the years since. The 2022 NFL season saw the broadcast pull in anywhere from 1.68 million to 1.17 million, with audiences trending downward as the season went on.
The 2023 season started strong enough with the ManningCast pulling in 1.52 million for the MNF season opener. However, we’re barely halfway through the season and the alternate telecast is now struggling to stay in the seven figures.
“For the most recent three ManningCasts, the total audience has been flirting with the possibility of dipping below one million,” wrote PFT’s Mike Florio on Wednesday. “On Monday night, 1.028 million chose the alternate telecast (featuring a visit from Arnold Schwarzenegger and his donkey). The Week 7 game (49ers-Vikings) had 1.068 million. For Week 5 (Packers-Raiders), the ManningCast attracted 1.036 million.”
Florio also focuses on how ManningCast’s percentage of the total MNF audience has fallen this season, though that seems to correlate with the fact that ABC is simulcasting MNF this season, which is invariably going to drop the percentage of viewership on both ESPN and ESPN2. While those drops don’t look great on paper, they’re not really indicative of as much as it seems.
That aside, we could see the ManningCast slide into six-digit numbers relatively soon. And if that happens, what does it mean? Does it signal something larger about the novelty of the broadcast or is it just a case of a telecast settling into its long-term audience? Or does it mean nothing because next season they’ll start with 1.6 million viewers and we’ll do this whole thing all over again?
We’ll glean a lot in the coming weeks about what the future might look like for the broadcast. Next Monday, the Manning brothers will be back for the Broncos-Bills, which isn’t terribly exciting. But on Nov. 20, they get a Super Bowl rematch with the Eagles vs. Chiefs and we could possibly see their numbers bounce back up. They take a break for Thanksgiving but in December the Mannings will return for Bengals vs. Jaguars, a potential playoff preview, and Chiefs vs. Patriots, which sounds like a blowout.
The ManningCast was never about monster ratings. It’s more about cultural relevance. So even if the ratings end up plateauing around the one million mark, it’ll really come down to whether or not the Mannings can maintain some sense of relevance with social media that’ll decide its viability. If that means more former politicians feeding donkeys and discussions about butt cheeks, then so be it.
