Monday Night Football scored its largest audience in 27 years for a Super Bowl rematch between two of the NFL’s best teams.
Eagles-Chiefs averaged a 14.9 rating and 29.02 million viewers on Monday Night Football across ABC (15.55M), ESPN (11.49M), the Peyton and Eli “Manningcast” on ESPN2 (1.92M) and ESPN Deportes (64K), the largest regular season MNF audience since Packers-Cowboys in November 1996 (31.45M) and sixth-largest dating back to the 1991 season. (Keep in mind Nielsen did not include out-of-home viewing in its viewership estimates prior to 2020.)
Philadelphia’s win, which peaked with 31.5 million viewers, obliterated the previous ESPN-era MNF high of 22.67 million for Bills-Jets in Week 1 of this season.
Most-watched Monday Night Football games since 1991
In addition to the MNF high, the Eagles’ win ranks as the highest rated and most-watched game of the season both overall and in all of the key young adult demographics (7.5 rating in adults 18-49, 5.8 in 18-34 and 8.9 in 25-54). Prior to Monday, the largest Nielsen-measured audience of the season was 27.1 million for the Week 9 national window on FOX. (Including Adobe Analytics, which measures NBC’s streaming viewership, the previous high was 27.5 million for the Lions-Chiefs Kickoff Game.)
As goes without saying, it ranks as the most-watched television program since the same two teams met in February’s Super Bowl.
Going back further, the game delivered the fourth-largest NFL regular season audience in the past nine years (excluding holidays) — behind last year’s Week 10 national window (mostly Cowboys-Packers: 29.17M), the Week 12 national window in 2019 (Cowboys-Patriots: 29.47M) and the Week 8 national window in 2015 (Seahawks-Cowboys: 29.39M). (An earlier version of this post mistakenly said it was the most-watched over that span.)
Compared to Week 11 last year — 49ers-Cardinals from Mexico City — ratings and viewership both jumped north of 150 percent from a 5.9 and 11.17 million.
As for the rest of Week 11, Sunday’s NFL national window (Jets-Bills in most markets) averaged a 10.5 and 20.99 million on CBS — the lowest rated and least-watched standalone national window this season. The previous lows were an 11.0 and 21.73 million on FOX the previous week. Ratings fell 23% and viewership 24% from last year (mostly Cowboys-Vikings: 13.7, 27.55M).
CBS also posted a decline for the first half of its doubleheader, as coverage featuring Steelers-Browns averaged a 6.6 and 12.75 million — both down 16% year-over-year.
With both teams recovering from slow starts, Vikings-Broncos drew a respectable 9.8 and 18.45 million on NBC’s Sunday Night Football — up 3% in both measures from Chiefs-Chargers a year ago (9.5, 17.89M).
Finally, the FOX singleheader (Cowboys-Panthers in a plurality of markets) averaged a 9.1 and 18.05 million — up 15% and 16% respectively from last year (feat. Lions-Giants: 8.0, 15.56M).
As previously noted, Thursday Night Football started the week off with a 6.2 and 12.92 million for Bengals-Ravens. All ten TNF games this season have increased double-digits from last year.
