The 2023 NFL season has seen the league feature three separate Monday Night Football doubleheaders.
And all indications are that we’ll be seeing even more as early as next year.
“The whole concept behind it is, can we take underdistributed games on Sunday afternoon and make it more widely distributed and we get a bigger audience?” NFL chief media and business officer Brian Rolapp told Ben Volin of the Boston Globe.
In addition to adding more Monday night games this year — the 2022 slate featured just one doubleheader — the 2023 slate has seen the league and ESPN/ABC tinker with formats. Whereas MNF doubleheaders previously consisted of one early game and one late game, the league has experimented with both overlapping games and simultaneous start times. The first two MNF doubleheaders in Weeks 2 and 3 this season saw staggered start times of 7:15 p.m. ET and 8:15 p.m. ET, while Week 14 included two games both kicking off at 8:15 p.m. ET.
While the league isn’t ready to commit to one format over the other, it’s clear that it’s on board with having multiple games on at the same time — even in primetime.
“I’m not sure we’ve drawn any broad conclusions yet, but we do like the model where it’s ultimately more football for fans,” Rolapp said. “Last Monday was a perfect example — both those games were fantastic, and everyone got to see it, go back and forth, which they’re doing on Sundays anyway in a lot of ways.”
ESPN is also on board.
Speaking to The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch earlier this year, ESPN president of content Burke Magnus explained what made the idea of staggered start times appealing to the network.
“The thought there is, can we combine total audience and do a little bit like we used to do in the old days of college football where we create a simultaneous national and regional appeal and use our networks to do that in a single window?” Magnus said. “Then it combines to sort of like a super audience total number.”
Like Rolapp, Magnus was noncommittal about a permanent format. It’s clear, however, that the network — like the league — prefers staggered or even simultaneous start times over playing two consecutive games.
Obviously, there are still several details that need to be worked out, not the least of which is how more MNF games would fit into ESPN’s rights deal with the NFL. But whether it’s staggered or simultaneous start times, it’s apparent that we’ll be getting even more Monday Night Football in 2024.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.