A close game between playoff contenders at a special neutral site was not enough to reverse Monday Night Football‘s slide.
The Week 11 Texans/Raiders NFL International Series game from Mexico City had a 6.9 final rating and 11.8 million viewers on ESPN’s Monday Night Football, down 22% in ratings and 17% in viewership from Bills/Patriots last year (8.9, 14.3M), and down 15% and 8%, respectively, from Steelers/Titans in 2014 (8.1, 12.8M).
The Raiders’ win, which peaked at a 7.8 and 13.3 million from 9:30-9:45 PM ET, was the lowest rated Week 11 edition of MNF since Titans/Broncos in 2007 (6.3) and the least-watched since Broncos/Chargers in 2010 (11.7M). All twelve Monday night games this season have hit multi-year lows in both ratings and viewership. Every other NFL window has had at least one year-over-year increase.
It was also the ninth MNF telecast thus far to fall below a 7.0 rating or 12 million viewers, compared to two such games all of last season.
Despite the lower numbers, Monday’s game was the highest rated and most-watched on ESPN since Giants/Vikings in Week 4 (8.0, 13.2M).
On ESPN Deportes, Texans/Raiders had 144,000 viewers — up 87% from Week 11 last year (77K) and the third-largest MNF audience on the network. Including the Spanish-language audience and streaming viewership on WatchESPN (240K), Texans/Raiders had 12.2 million viewers.
ESPN’s telecast had a 4.0 rating in adults 18-49, down 22% from last year (5.1) and down 11% from 2014 (4.5).
(Mon. numbers from ESPN, ShowBuzz Daily 11/22)
