A Monday Night Football doubleheader happens tonight with a significant overlap between the games. Tennessee and Buffalo kickoff at 7:15 PM ET on ESPN and Minnesota and Philadelphia kicks off at 8:30 PM ET on ABC. The worldwide leader says the presentation of the two games is a “test” for how games will air in the future.
According to a report from John Ourand of Sports Business Journal, ESPN and ABC will employ a “NFL RedZone look-and-feel” at times, with a scoreboard for the differing game listed on screen at all times, as well as live look-ins during each game.
“As we talked about the new deal, we wanted to increase the exclusive game inventory that we have for Monday Night Football, and we wanted to continue to increase our ABC presence,” ESPN Senior Vice President of Programming and Acquisitions Julie Sobieski told SBJ. “This became one way for us to express incremental inventory and to do something unique.”
Sobieski equated ESPN’s doubleheader coverage to that of their college football portfolio, noting the network navigates several different games airing on several different networks during several different time windows each Saturday during the fall.
Earlier this month, NFL Vice President of Broadcasting Mike North told WFAN’s Boomer & Gio the idea to overlap the Monday Night Football broadcasts was the NFL’s idea, not ESPN’s.
“When we did the new deals with ESPN and the Disney family, ABC has been getting back in the NFL family over the course of the last couple of years,” North said. They’ve been simulcasting the Wild Card game, they’ve been simulcasting a couple of Monday Night Football games, and they wanted a couple of games of their own. So what we talked to them about was what’s the right way to do that?
