If the Disney-YouTube TV blackout took a toll on “Monday Night Football” viewership a week ago, that was certainly not the case this past week.
The latest edition of ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” (Packers-Eagles) averaged 20.6 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes — marking the largest audience for “MNF” since Chiefs-Jaguars in Week 5 (22.3M) and the fourth-most watched this season.
The Eagles’ low-key win, which peaked with more than 23 million viewers in the 9:15 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the largest Week 10 “MNF” audience since Vikings-Packers in 2000, which ended on a memorable walk-off touchdown in overtime. (As with all historical comparisons, keep in mind that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 and did not do so in 100 percent of markets until earlier this year.)
Viewership soared over Dolphins-Rams in Week 10 last year, but that was a rare cable-exclusive edition of “MNF” that averaged 12.12 million.
As Packers-Eagles was one of the most anticipated games of the NFL season, an audience north of 20 million would typically be expected. But “MNF” last week turned in a weaker-than-expected performance for Cardinals-Cowboys, which despite the presence of “America’s team” was the least-watched “MNF” game all season to air on both ESPN and ABC.
“MNF” delivered the largest Nielsen-measured primetime audience of Week 10, topping “Sunday Night Football” (Steelers-Chargers). But “SNF” had the exact same audience of 20.6 million when including Adobe Analytics, which tracks the network’s streaming viewership. (NBC is the only network whose streaming viewership is not tracked by Nielsen, and as such it issues a combined figure across the two measurement companies.)
On a Nielsen-only basis, “SNF” averaged a 9.6 rating and 18.59 million — up 5% and 7% respectively from last year’s 9.1 and 17.40 million for Lions-Texans. The combined Nielsen and Adobe Analytics figure of 20.6 million was also up 7% from last year (19.3M).
As is usually the case, the NFL national window was the most-watched of the week. FOX averaged an 11.0 and 23.11 million for coverage featuring Rams-49ers, down from an 11.9 and 24.61 million last year on CBS, when the featured game was Eagles-Cowboys.
In the early windows, CBS averaged an 8.6 and 18.21 million for singleheader coverage featuring Patriots-Buccaneers — up from last year on FOX and the most-watched Week 10 singleheader since 2015 on FOX, with all the attendant caveats regarding Nielsen methodological changes.
Meanwhile, FOX drew a 6.7 and 13.4 million for the first half of its doubleheader, down from last year on CBS.
Rounding out the Sunday slate, the Falcons-Colts game from Berlin averaged a 2.9 and 5.76 million on NFL Network — up considerably from Giants-Panthers last year.
Week 10 started off with a 6.4 and 13.93 million for Raiders-Broncos on Amazon Prime Video “Thursday Night Football.” Officially, that is a 2% increase over Bengals-Ravens last year (13.63M). But keep in mind that Nielsen in September shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” methodology that builds on the traditional Nielsen panel by adding data from smart TVs, set-top boxes and in some cases (e.g. Amazon) internal, first-party measurement. It is official Nielsen policy to compare “Big Data + Panel” to last year’s panel-only viewership.
But while “Big Data + Panel” only became official Nielsen currency in September, it had been tracked the prior two years — and Amazon regularly publicized those viewership figures. Compared to last year’s “Big Data” figure for Bengals-Ravens, this year’s audience actually declined 4% from 14.58 million.
“TNF” has now in three-straight weeks posted a year-over-year increase that would actually have been a decline if compared to last year’s “Big Data” figures.
