The Monday Night Football debut of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman delivered the series’ largest season-opening audience since another much-hyped broadcast debut 22 years ago.
Broncos-Seahawks averaged a combined 11.1 rating and 19.84 million viewers on the season premiere of Monday Night Football on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN+ and ESPN Deportes, marking the most-watched season opening edition of MNF since Broncos-Rams on Labor Day 2000, comedian Dennis Miller’s debut as an analyst (22.91M). The previous high over that span was 19.75 million for Giants-Broncos the following year.
Regardless of week, Seattle’s win delivered the largest Monday night regular season audience since Saints-Patriots on ESPN in November 2009 (21.40M) and third-largest since ESPN acquired rights — trailing Saints-Patriots and another 2009 game, then-Vikings QB Brett Favre facing his former team Green Bay for the first time (21.84M). Including “MNF” games on other nights of the week, it ranks fourth behind the two 2009 games and Cowboys-Eagles on a Saturday night this past January (20.20M).
Viewership increased 16% over last year’s Raiders-Ravens MNF opener on the same suite of networks. Broken down by channel, Monday’s game averaged a 6.0 rating and 10.3 million on ABC, a 4.3 and 8.0 million on ESPN and a 0.8 and 1.5 million for the Peyton and Eli Manning-fronted “Manningcast” on ESPN2. The Manningcast increased 86% from last year’s Week 1 edition, which it should be noted was far less of a draw than the subsequent simulcasts.
Spanish-language coverage on ESPN Deportes chipped in just 51,000.
Monday Night Football delivered the third-largest audience of Week 1, slightly below the Bills-Rams Kickoff Game (19.94M) and further back of Buccaneers-Cowboys on Sunday night (23.30M), both on NBC.
It should be noted that while there is some serendipity in Buck and Aikman’s debut being the most-watched since Miller’s, the driving force behind Monday’s numbers was no doubt the storyline of Broncos QB Russell Wilson returning to Seattle for the first time as an opponent.
Most-watched Week 1 Monday night games
2000-present, excludes NFL Kickoff games that aired as part of MNF package
(Nielsen estimates from ESPN PR, Programming Insider 9.13, ShowBuzz Daily 9.13, additional info from Variety 9.12.00)
