With all the usual caveats regarding changes in Nielsen methodology, “Monday Night Football” officially began the new season with its largest Week 1 audience in three decades.
Broncos-Chiefs averaged 23.2 million viewers in the season premiere of NFL “Monday Night Football” on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes, up 5% from Vikings-Bears last year (22.1M), and officially the largest Week 1 “MNF” audience in 30 years — since Cowboys-Bears on ABC in 1996 (27.7M). In the 20 years since “MNF” moved to ESPN in 2006, the previous high for a Week 1 game was 22.6 million for Bills-Jets in 2023, Aaron Rodgers’ ill-fated New York debut.
The Chiefs’ blowout win also ranks as the most-watched edition of “MNF” in any week of the season since Ravens-49ers on Christmas 2023 (27.2M), and the most-watched outside of a holiday since an Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl rematch the same year (29.0M). It trails only those two games as the most-watched “MNF” game since the series moved to ESPN.
Note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025, that this is only in the second year of a new Nielsen methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel, and that Nielsen has recently introduced a tweak to its measurement that is intended to better account for co-viewing of games.
Those changes will generally skew comparisons to past years, particularly those before the addition of out-of-home viewing in 2020. For example, a 2009 Patriots-Saints “MNF” game had 21.40 million viewers without aid of out-of-home viewing or any co-viewing enhancements (or certainly any “Big Data” in an era before streaming), meaning it almost certainly would have had more viewers under present-day methodology.
“MNF” delivered the third-largest audience of Week 1, behind the two primetime games on NBC — Cowboys-Giants on Sunday night (25.7M) and the Patriots-Seahawks Kickoff Game last Wednesday (25.1M).
