The decision to discontinue the “Monday Night Football” doubleheaders paid off immediately in Week 2 of the NFL season.
Giants-Rams averaged 19.4 million viewers in the Week 2 edition of “Monday Night Football” on the ESPN family of networks, up 21% from Buccaneers-Texans last year, which aired in an earlier 7 PM ET window as part of a doubleheader. (Last year’s Chargers-Raiders nightcap had 9.7 million.)
The Rams’ win delivered the largest Week 2 “MNF” audience since 1999, when Falcons-Cowboys averaged 21.53 million on ABC. Keep in mind it was just the second time since “MNF” moved to ESPN in 2006 that a Week 2 game aired on ABC under the traditional single-game format. The other was the COVID-affected season of 2020. The remaining Week 2 editions of “MNF” were either exclusive to cable or aired as part of a doubleheader.
The now-discontinued “MNF” doubleheaders largely underperformed in the ratings. Games either had to air in unusually early — or late — timeslots in order to facilitate two fully national windows, or cannibalized themselves in overlapping windows. As part of ESPN’s acquisition of NFL Media assets last summer, the network converted its three contractually-mandated doubleheader windows, plus an annual game on ESPN+, into NFL Network inventory. (ABC and ESPN still air a Week 18 Saturday doubleheader.)
“MNF” has now opened its season with its largest Week 1 audience since 1996 and largest Week 2 audience since 1999. (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 tweaked its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games.)
Between the back-to-back multi-year highs, and the excision of last year’s poor-performing late doubleheader window, “MNF” is up 29% through the first two weeks of the season to an average of 21.4 million viewers.
For the week, Giants-Rams ranked third in viewership behind the FOX late doubleheader window (27.21M) and Colts-Chiefs on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” (24.29M). “MNF” has placed third in each of the first two weeks.
