ESPN scored an underwhelming audience for its third Monday Night Football doubleheader of the year.
Monday’s lone game available on traditional television delivered ESPN’s second most-watched Week 7 game since 2010, though that figure may be misleading. The Baltimore Ravens-Tampa Bay Buccaneers game averaged over 16 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2, per ESPN PR. Predictably, the most-watched Week 7 MNF game since 2010 was last year’s San Francisco 49ers-Minnesota Vikings game, which was similarly boosted by an ABC simulcast. That game averaged 18.6 million viewers across the three networks.
The @Ravens–@Buccaneers delivered one of ESPN’s most-watched Monday Night Football Week 7 games since 2010 pic.twitter.com/8OMGlzrm15
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) October 22, 2024
Ravens-Bucs kicked off about 45 minutes prior to the second leg of Monday’s doubleheader. The Los Angeles Chargers and Arizona Cardinals got going at 9:00 p.m. ET exclusively on ESPN+. Per Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, the game drew a measly 1.8 million viewers for the streamer, a figure that includes folks that watched the game on broadcast television in the teams’ local markets.
16 million viewers is a decent superlative for a game with direct NFL competition, though not the success that ESPN is making it out to be. Last week’s Buffalo Bills-New York Jets MNF game averaged 17.3 million viewers across the same three networks. The week before that, ESPN drew 15.9 million for the New Orleans Saints-Kansas City Chiefs game without an ABC simulcast, which was the most-watched cable-only MNF game since 2019.
As for the network’s two other doubleheaders this season, both seemingly outperformed the combined figure from Monday. In Week 4, the Seattle Seahawks-Detroit Lions and Tennessee Titans-Miami Dolphins doubleheader averaged 20.3 million viewers during its overlap period, with the Seahawks-Lions averaging 15.0 million on ABC. Week 3’s Washington Commanders-Cincinnati Bengals and Jacksonville Jaguars-Buffalo Bills doubleheader averaged over 19 million for its overlap period, with Commanders-Bengals clocking in at 15.2 million by itself on ABC.
Neither of the first two doubleheaders featured a game exclusively behind the ESPN+ paywall as Monday’s did. Given that ESPN did not release viewership data for that game, one could imagine the reported 1.8 million viewer figure is directionally accurate. If so, overlap viewership for the doubleheader would slot in well below that of Weeks 3 and 4.
Also of note, the ManningCast on ESPN2 averaged 1.1 million viewers for Ravens-Bucs. It’s the 30th episode of the ManningCast that went over the one-million viewer mark. The alt-cast continues to rebound well from its season opener.
Monday Night Football viewership for the rest of the season will likely follow a predictable pattern. Games that feature an ABC simulcast will compare favorably to past years while games without are likely to see a decline from last season, when every game was simulcast on the broadcast network. Earlier this month, the NFL announced six additional MNF games would get the simulcast treatment, which should help ESPN’s comparisons.
No matter what, it’s still the NFL. And any NFL viewership figure will dwarf that of other live sports properties. So all of this, more or less, is semantics.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.