It was expected that Monday’s Super Bowl rematch between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs would draw a large TV audience. But the Monday Night Football result might have surpassed even expectations set by ESPN and ABC.
The prime-time broadcast drew an average audience of 29.021 million viewers across multiple platforms (ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPN+, ESPN Deportes and NFL+), rendering it the most-viewed Monday Night Football game since 1996. According to the measurements, 15.55 million people watched on ABC, while 11.49 million viewed the game on ESPN. The primary broadcast featured play-by-play announcer Joe Buck, color commentator Troy Aikman and sideline reporter Lisa Salters, along with NFL Live host Laura Rutledge and officiating analyst John Parry.
An additional 1.92 million viewers watched Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli, colloquially known as the “ManningCast,” on ESPN2. The viewership figure marks the alternate presentation’s best average audience figure in more than two years. Moreover, Monday Night Countdown featuring Scott Van Pelt, Ryan Clark, Marcus Spears, Robert Griffin III and Larry Fitzgerald garnered an average of 1.8 million viewers, marking its best audience of the season.
This Week 11 broadcast represents the largest average audience for a Monday Night Football broadcast in the history of the property airing on ESPN, which began in the 2006 season. Earlier in the year, the Week 1 matchup between the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets drew an average of 22.6 million people, which was the record-setting Monday night broadcast at the time.
The Eagles’ victory over the Chiefs is the largest NFL viewership total of the season, with the previous high being a total of 27.1 million people from the Week 9 afternoon window on FOX. Monday Night Football games have been airing on The Walt Disney Company’s broadcast television network, ABC, since the second week of the regular season, including one game within a Monday night doubleheader within Week 2 and Week 3. The decision was reportedly made due to strikes by Hollywood writers and actors that created a dearth in new fall programming on the network.
