'Monday Night Football' delivers big viewership numbers

Last season, ESPN’s Week 1 broadcast of the infamous game between the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills where Aaron Rodgers suffered his season-ending injury set the network’s record for Monday Night Football broadcasts. The network’s debut broadcast in the 2024 season, also featuring Rodgers and the Jets, didn’t quite hit those marks. But it still delivered impressive ratings despite some difficult circumstances.

The ongoing DirecTV-Disney carriage dispute has lingered past Week 1 of the NFL season , meaning that many of those customers either needed to find another platform to watch Monday’s matchup between the New York Jets and the San Francisco 49ers or miss out on it entirely.

Despite this ongoing issue, ESPN’s broadcast generated 20.5 million viewers across all networks , which includes the simulcast on ABC and ESPN2’s alternate “ManningCast” broadcast with Peyton Manning and Eli Manning (plus special guests, including recurring figure Bill Belichick).

Interestingly, ESPN has not yet released the specific viewership numbers of the new-look ManningCast. So naturally, there are already questions being asked about how well that broadcast did specifically, including from Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio . Florio wrote that this may be reason to believe that the alternate broadcast has finally dipped below one million viewers.

Regardless, the overall performance of the season-opening broadcast of Monday Night Football is certainly an overwhelming positive given the ongoing DirecTV situation and the impacts that has. (Those include full blackouts on the eight owned-and-operated ABC affiliates in many of the country’s largest media markets, and streaming blackouts for other ABC affiliates). Despite that, this game now stands as the second most-watched Week 1 broadcast of Monday Night Football and the sixth most-watched MNF game in the ESPN era.

It also continues an impressive trend of ratings in the Joe Buck-Troy Aikman-Lisa Salters era of Monday Night Football . The three most-watched Week 1 MNF broadcasts ever have come since the trio came together as a team three seasons ago.

The impressive ratings for Monday’s game perhaps shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise considering all of the storylines surrounding the game. It was of course Rodgers’ first full regular-season game as a member of the New York Jets following his injury in last year’s opener. And the reigning NFC champion 49ers are certainly a team that doesn’t lack star power in their own right.

[ ESPN Press Room ]

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