ESPN’s Week 2 broadcast of Monday Night Football did not feature an ABC simulcast like the Week 1 broadcast did. And naturally, viewership numbers represented exactly that.
According to an ESPN press release, the Week 2 broadcast of the Atlanta Falcons victory over the Philadelphia Eagles generated just over 15 million viewers(15,038,000) across all networks.
This includes the ESPN2 alternate stream of the ManningCast, which inversely saw a drastic increase in Week 2 at 1.34 million average viewers compared to just 872,000 viewers in Week 1.
The Week 2 MNF broadcast was a significant step back from the Week 1 MNF broadcast that brought in 20.5 million average viewers. But when you compare it to broadcasts of years past that also weren’t shown on ABC, it actually ranks as the third-best ESPN-ESPN2 broadcast since 2019 from a ratings standpoint.
The distinction between an MNF broadcast simulcast on ABC and an ESPN/ESPN 2 exclusive broadcast will be important to note for the remainder of the 2024-25 NFL season. Particularly because of the remaining MNF broadcasts for the rest of the season, just three standalone games (Week 8, Week 14, and Week 17) will be ABC simulcast games.
Monday Night Countdown, the ESPN studio show ahead of Monday Night Football, also continued its impressive numbers to start the 2024-25 NFL season. 1.4 million viewers tuned into the pregame show, which is an 8 percent increase over Week 1 and a 30 percent increase from its Week 2 show last year.
You have to wonder whether the Week 2 viewership increase for Monday Night Countdown could be directly correlated to the end of the Disney-DirecTV carriage disputes, which was still an issue for the Week 1 broadcast. Or perhaps the decision to bring in uber-popular NFL analyst Jason Kelce has just paid off.
Regardless, ESPN has to be pleased with how Monday Night Countdown and Monday Night Football have performed thus far this season.
