Monday Night Football dominated the rest of television on December 4, including the start of the NBA In-Season Tournament knockout round.
The latest edition of NFL Monday Night Football (Bengals-Jaguars) averaged a combined 16.44 million viewers across ABC (8.87M), ESPN (6.61M) and the Peyton and Eli “Manningcast” on ESPN2 (964K), marking the largest Week 13 MNF audience since 2010. (Keep in mind out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen final nationals until 2020.)
Viewership was actually the lowest for MNF in nearly a month, since Chargers-Jets in Week 9 (14.50M).
The game faced unusual competition from the NBA In-Season Tournament on TNT. While the NFL dominated the head-to-head, there may have been a slight impact.
As for the NBA, Celtics-Pacers averaged 1.06 million across TNT (1.02M) and a betting-themed truTV simulcast (40K). Pelicans-Kings followed with 741,000 (718K on TNT, 23K on truTV). The two games rank among the three least-watched on TNT or ESPN all season, not surprising as they were the first games on either network to compete with the NFL.
The In-Season Tournament is also slated to compete with the NFL on Thursday night.
The Pelicans have now played in two of the three-least watched games on ESPN or TNT this season, with Monday’s game joining their November 1 matchup against Oklahoma City on ESPN (1.03M). That game aired opposite the World Series.
In other sports action Monday, Iowa-Purdue men’s basketball averaged 367,000 viewers on BTN. Not making the below chart, the Florida State-Stanford NCAA women’s soccer national championship averaged just 78,000 on ESPNU — up slightly from UCLA-North Carolina last year (76K).
Monday, December 4 sports viewership
