The postseason debut of Monday Night Football was a bigger draw than the window it replaced, if just so-so by NFL playoff standards.
Monday’s Cardinals-Rams NFC Wild Card game averaged 23.15 million viewers across the ESPN family of networks, up 15% from the Saturday afternoon window it replaced, Colts-Bills on CBS last season (20.08M). Compared to previous Wild Card games on ESPN/ABC, viewership declined 7% from Ravens-Titans on a Sunday afternoon last year (24.82M) and 12% from Bills-Texans on a Saturday afternoon two years ago (26.34M).
Of the eight total Wild Card games in ESPN history, Cardinals-Rams ranks fifth ahead of Colts-Texans in 2019 (22.82M), Titans-Chiefs in 2018 (22.18M) and Cardinals-Panthers on ESPN alone in 2015 (21.68M). Most of those previous games aired in the late Saturday afternoon window.
The Rams’ blowout win, which peaked with 27.9 million from 9:30-9:45 PM ET, was the least-watched game of the three-day Wild Card weekend. It averaged three million fewer viewers than the second-least watched game, Patriots-Bills on CBS Saturday night (26.37M).
As one would expect, the first-ever Monday NFL playoff game delivered the league’s largest Monday audience in more than 15 years — since Christmas Day 2006 (Eagles-Cowboys: 23.21M). It outperformed the College Football Playoff National Championship the previous Monday night, which aired on the ESPN cable networks (Georgia-Alabama: 22.6M).
Broken down by network, the game averaged a 7.2 rating and 12.77 million viewers on ABC, a 4.6 and 8.83 million on ESPN and a 0.8 and 1.42 million for the Peyton and Eli Manning-fronted alternate presentation on ESPN2.
The complete six-game, three-day Wild Card weekend averaged 30.5 million viewers, including additional streaming viewership not tracked by Nielsen — up 21% from last year and the second-highest average for the round in the past six years. Wild Card weekend also averaged 30.5 million two years ago, but that figure did not include additional streaming data.
Figures for the other Wild Card games were previously discussed in the following post.
[Nielsen estimates from network and league PR]
