Aaron Rodgers’ disastrous Jets debut delivered the largest Monday Night Football audience more than two decades.
Bills-Jets averaged a 12.5 rating and 22.64 million viewers in the season premiere of Monday Night Football across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes, marking the largest MNF audience in any week of the season since at least 2000.
The previous high was 22.637 million for Steelers-Colts on ABC alone in November 2005.
Largest Monday Night Football audiences since 2000
The Jets’ Pyrrhic overtime victory, which peaked with 25.2 million viewers from 9-9:15 PM ET, delivered the largest Week 1 MNF audience since Broncos-Rams in 2000 (22.91M) — increasing 12% in ratings and 14% in viewership from the previous high set by Broncos-Seahawks last year (11.1, 19.84M).
Monday’s game was highly anticipated due to the New York debut of longtime Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who in the span of about 20 minutes went from sprinting on-field carrying an American flag — an image with particular resonance due to the 9/11 anniversary — to limping off the field with a season-ending Achilles tear.
For the first time under the current NFL media rights deals that began in the 2006 season, Monday Night Football averaged a larger Week 1 audience than its Sunday night counterpart. Cowboys-Giants averaged a 10.4 and 20.18 million on NBC the previous night. Overall, Bills-Jets delivered the second-largest audience of Week 1 behind only the Lions-Chiefs Kickoff Game (13.0, 24.75M).
(* Excludes last season’s Week 17 matchup between the Bills and Bengals, which was abandoned in the first quarter after Bills S Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on-field.)
