We may have seen the last of the concurrent Monday Night Football double-headers on ESPN and ABC.
Week 6 marks the final concurrent Monday night games of the 2025 season, and this week marks the final doubleheader overall, though kickoff in Detroit and Seattle will be separated by three hours.
Starting as soon as next season under a proposed partnership between ESPN and the NFL, ESPN will give up the four games that made up its MNF doubleheaders. Those games will go back to the NFL (presumably to sell to streamers or place in other windows). In return, ESPN will take over NFL Network’s seven-game slate, which will continue to air on an ESPN-owned NFL Network.
NFL Media head Hans Schroeder acknowledged to Sportico in September that the experiment of airing concurrent Monday night games has not “delivered yet.”
“I’m not sure it’s delivered exactly yet what we thought it would, but we’re going to continue working and look at it and ultimately push to figure out the best model for our fans,” said Schroeder, while arguing that “additional choice” in the same window can still be a net positive for fans.
On many Monday nights in recent years, ESPN has had NFL games on three of ESPN, ESPN2, ABC and ESPN+. As it phases ESPN+ out of its typical programming strategy and increasingly pushes fans toward its streaming app and ABC broadcast network for big events, the concurrent MNF doubleheaders no longer make as much sense.
These ESPN+ games and double-headers have led to lower ratings. A Cardinals-Chargers game last October, which aired on ESPN+, drew fewer than 2 million average viewers on the platform, a shockingly paltry number for a national NFL broadcast.
“In 2021, the notion of it being obvious that true doubleheaders would drive better individual game ratings vs. overlap, we didn’t really know that,” ESPN VP of programming Tim Reed told Sportico.
Now, both ESPN and the NFL are moving away from the model.
Still, the NFL will face some interesting decisions going forward. The four games ESPN is giving back create new inventory the league can sell to streamers or place in other windows. NFL Network will continue airing its slate of international games and late-season Saturday games under ESPN ownership.
The bigger question is what happens if federal approval drags past next spring. If the deal isn’t finalized in time for the 2026 schedule, the NFL will need to figure out how to get ESPN its 21 games across 17 weeks without resorting to the MNF doubleheaders both sides are trying to eliminate.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.