TV Ratings: MNF Viewers Best Since 2010

ESPN’s Monday Night Football viewership is at its highest since 2010 through the first nine weeks of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman’s first season and nearly 90 million fans have watched MNF this season, providing a foundation for successes across ESPN’s entire NFL portfolio. 

Outside of the significant season-to-date viewership, ESPN also introduced two new initiatives this season to immediate success – the Week 2 multi-game option which generated more than 20 million viewers across Disney networks during overlapping game action and the most-streamed event ever on ESPN+ with its first exclusive game in Week 8.

Furthermore, Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli continues to re-write the records for ESPN alternate telecasts, while multiple ESPN studio shows are seeing multi-year viewership highs thus far in the season.

Monday Night Football – Successes across the Board

Monday Night Football is averaging 14.3 million viewers a game for the eight weeks it has presented a standalone 8:15 p.m. ET kickoff (eight games – Week 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9), the television franchise’s best viewership average through nine weeks since 2010. In the ESPN era of MNF (2006-present), this season’s viewership is the third best, trailing 2010 and 2009 by 3% and 2% respectively.

Beyond being up 4% year-over-year, MNF’s viewership is up double digits from each season beginning with 2015 and through 2020.

In Week 2, which is not included in the above season-to-date viewership, Monday Night Football featured two games with staggered kickoffs (7:15 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.). During that special presentation, which will become a staple of Monday Night Football beginning next season, Disney networks averaged 20.6 million viewers when Tennessee-Buffalo and Minnesota-Philadelphia were shown simultaneously during a two-hour period (8:30 – 10:30 p.m.). Inclusive of both games’ average minute audience in Week 2, Monday Night Football’s season-to-date average is 13.4 million viewers through all 10 games (nine weeks), in line with viewership through the same time period in 2021.

In totality, through the first half of the season, 89 million fans have watched Monday Night Football, up 9% from the same time last season (81.4 million).