Outrage meter
ESPNNFLStreamingBy Ken Fang and Ben Koo on

Welcome back to another edition of the Awful Announcing Sports Streaming Outrage Meter, where we attempt to quantify just how cumbersome and annoying streaming exclusives are for fans and audiences. We grade each streaming nuisance in four categories with a scale of 1-25, (1 being not that annoying/inconvenient/frustrating, 25 being extremely annoying/inconvenient/frustrating). The most egregious score possible would be 100.

It’s happening again. Another NFL game that’s exclusively on a streaming service.

Earlier this season, we had the Green Bay-Pittsburgh game on Opening Weekend from Brazil on Peacock. This time, ESPN+ gets a Monday Night Football nightcap as part of a doubleheader.

Over the past two seasons, we’ve had MNF doubleheaders split among ESPN and ABC, whether one game was scheduled at 7:30 p.m. ET with the other in its regular time slot of 8:15 p.m. ET. For this Week 7’s Monday Night Football twin-bill, ESPN and ABC will simulcast Baltimore and Tampa Bay at 8:15 p.m. ET with the second game between the Los Angeles Chargers and Arizona Cardinals as a streaming-only exclusive for ESPN+. While ESPN+ has had its exclusive game in London for the last two seasons, this marks the first time they’ll have it for Monday Night Football.

Last season, NBC and Peacock played a linear/streaming doubleheader during both the regular season and Wild Card Weekend, which gave fans plenty of reasons to complain.

While ESPN has been heavily promoting tonight’s doubleheader, there will likely be viewers unaware that Chargers-Cardinals is behind the dreaded paywall. Here’s our assessment of how much of an annoyance this will be.

How We Got Here

In 2021, ESPN announced a new 10-year contract with the National Football League that provided three weeks of MNF doubleheaders and an exclusive game for ESPN+. The key was that it would come from the NFL’s International inventory from either London or Germany, as stated in the original press release:

A highlight of ESPN’s increased regular-season package will be one annual exclusive national game on ESPN+, the industry-leading sports streaming service. The game will take place internationally and will be aired live in the Sunday morning ET window. Additionally, this agreement allows ESPN the opportunity to simulcast all ESPN/ABC game telecasts on ESPN+.

In addition to the one game for the streaming platform, ESPN+ received highlights rights, which allowed NFL Primetime to return after a fifteen-year absence.

As mentioned, ESPN’s three weeks of doubleheaders would allow for games on both ESPN and ABC. However, as the NFL has already completed its London schedule this season and has only one more international game in Germany in Week 10, all of which are scheduled for NFL Network, there was no room for ESPN+. Thus, the NFL ensured that the streaming service would get its one game per season in this last MNF doubleheader this year.

Over the last two seasons, knowing that the London game was usually not a marquee matchup and many fans were often still sleeping, at church, or unaware it even happening, many just bypassed the ESPN+ contest. Perhaps that’s why the exclusive game has now been moved to Monday night, where fans are keenly aware and interested.

Event Broadcast History/Scale of Annoyance

 

Monday Night Football goes back to 1970 when it began as a novelty for ABC but quickly became a ratings juggernaut just weeks into the new package. In 2006, the package moved to cable when ESPN took over and kept it mostly off broadcast television until recently when it was used to bolster ABC last year during the writers’ and actors’ strikes. It’s being used again this season amid some weaker ratings.

However, this marks the first time a Monday Night Football game will be strictly streamed.

This ends six decades of games airing on linear television, whether broadcast or cable. ESPN has had NFL games on ESPN+ before, so it’s not entirely new, just new for Monday Night Football.

With that in mind, we will give this a 15 out of a potential 25 points as this is very annoying, especially for those who won’t realize it until they try to tune in, but there is at least one game tonight that doesn’t require having a streaming service.

You’re getting your Monday night fix, but not dessert.

What is the Ransom?

ESPN+ costs $11.99 per month or $119.99 annually. That’s a lot. It can be part of the Disney streaming bundle, Disney+, and Hulu, at $14.99 monthly with ads or $24.99 per month ad-free on Hulu and Disney+. As ESPN prepares a standalone service, expect the cost to be even higher. As parent company Disney emphasizes streaming, the move away from cable and broadcast has become even more prominent.

The cost for this and other programming, whether it’s college sports, exclusive original content, MLB, NHL, or NBA, is quite expensive. This makes for quite a big haul for consumers.

If you don’t have the Disney bundle and are in a pinch, $11.99 isn’t great, but unlike other ransoms, it’s stomach-able. We’ll give this one a 10 out of 25. 

Broadcast Quality

This is ESPN. Even as this Chargers-Cardinals game is being shuffled to streaming, the Worldwide Leader will not skimp on quality. The NFL has standards and requires a broadcast-quality production. If you watch this game on your personal device or a set-top box like Apple TV+, you will not see something cheap.

We score 2 out of 25 here as the annoyance will be minimal.

ROI

If this is your first time watching an event on ESPN+, the company hopes you’ll stay for others.

As ESPN+ grows, you’ll see how Disney will continue to look for more content to feed the beast with more rights down the road. For now, ESPN+ is more of a niche offering. Some of the reasons people subscribe now are for low-level college football games, NHL, NCAA Olympic sports and championships, and UFC events.

From the list below, do you see yourself sticking around for this lineup outside of tonight’s game?

ESPN+ lineup of rights

The 30 for 30 catalogs and a slew of other originals (hello, Omaha Productions) also give you some options for binge-watching if you are interested. If you’re a sports documentary fan and haven’t caught a lot of 30 for 30s, you can probably get a lot of mileage subscribing to ESPN+ for the game and then packing in a handful or more excellent docs within the month. You also get access to more written context on ESPN’s website if that’s your type of thing, although that whole value proposition is changing.

Ultimately, how good of a service is this for your $12 a month? We’d have to assume if you don’t already have ESPN+ and are just subscribing now, you’re unlikely to watch much else on the service.

Despite our appreciation for the 30 for 30s, this isn’t the most robust offering. We’ll go with a 21 out of 25 score. 

Final Score

The total score is 47 out of 100 on the annoyance scale.

The very first Monday Night Football streaming game is undoubtedly annoying, but it’s $12, and you still get to watch football tonight even if you don’t decide to sign up for this one.

There are many, many, many worse offenders.

Still, though, it’s pretty annoying!

You can read our previous Sports Streaming Outragre Meter for Fubo UEFA Euro 2024 here.