Add Pat McAfee to the list of sports fans who can’t quite get into alt-casts.
After interviewing Bill Belichick, who will be in-person in Philadelphia for Monday Night Football this week, McAfee weighed in on the interesting dynamic between ESPN and ESPN2 broadcasting the game each Monday.
McAfee, like many NFL diehards, is hyped for Belichick’s weekly appearance on the ManningCast with Peyton and Eli Manning. But he admitted he recently switched from watching MNF solely through the brother QBs to primarily tuning into Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on the primary broadcast on ESPN and ABC.
While McAfee did not directly address falling viewership for the ManningCast, he predicted the show would continue to be consumed more and more through social media clips going forward.
“That’s a fascinating little thing that’s going on between Joe and Troy’s broadcast version, which is historically award-worthy,” McAfee said. “And then the ManningCast, I think the ManningCast is going to become clips for a lot of people. Which is going to happen.”
While McAfee said he was excited for guest appearances by Miles Teller and Matt Ryan following Belichick’s first-half introduction to the game, he agreed with the consensus that even the best alt-casts make it more difficult to follow the game.
“You do get lost. You don’t really get to watch the game whenever you’re watching (the ManningCast),” McAfee said. “It’s very hard to pay attention to everything going on.”
Now, McAfee still checks into the ManningCast throughout the game each Monday night. But when he really wants to lock in, he lets Buck and Aikman take the steering wheel.
“I flip back and forth as well,” McAfee added. “But I was a strictly ManningCast person for a bit, and it got to the point where I don’t even know what the f*** is going on … but hey, that’s 2024 football.”
McAfee gives it to his audience straight, even when it comes to ESPN. And it’s not exactly breaking news that the ManningCast is losing viewers. In 2022, at least 1 million viewers tuned into the ManningCast most weeks. But Week 1 this year drew the fewest viewers since the premiere episode of the alt-cast in 2021.
This year, Peyton Manning acknowledged the alt-cast’s need for more football talk. That led to the addition of Belichick as well as more direct interruptions of celebrity guests when they take the conversation off-course or interrupt a big moment in the game.
At this point, fans know the ManningCast is basically a podcast recorded during an NFL game. The number of people who prefer that over the primary broadcast appears to be dwindling, McAfee included.
