Around 15 million people tuned in to watch some or all of ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” match-up between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Atlanta Falcons, according to Nielsen ratings shared by the network.
The total audience of 15.038 million viewers makes the Week 2 broadcast the third highest-rated game not simulcast on ABC since the National Football League’s (NFL) 2019-2020 season, the network affirmed.
Around 41,000 households tuned in to watch the game in Spanish on ESPN Deportes, according to Nielsen figures, with the rest (around 14.997 million viewers) watching on ESPN, ESPN 2 or ESPN Plus. The ratings did not include simulcasts on ABC stations in Philadelphia or Atlanta. As part of its telecast agreement with the NFL, Disney is required to offer Monday Night Football games on at least one broadcast station in the cities of the two teams playing each week.
An alternate broadcast featuring Eli and Payton Manning — affectionately nicknamed the “Manningcast” by some — earned 1.34 million viewers to ESPN 2 and ESPN Plus, the network said. While the alternate broadcast continue to see its audience dip, ESPN said the viewership figure marks a 12 percent lift from the show’s 2023 average of 1.2 million viewers across 10 games.
Unlike the prior week’s game, which grabbed more than 20 million viewers, the ESPN telecast of Monday Night Football was available to around 11 million DirecTV and U-Verse customers thanks to a tentative deal reached over the weekend that allowed the pay TV provider to restore around a dozen channels owned by the Walt Disney Company, including the sports network.
