One of the sports talk personalities whose prominence has risen significantly in recent years is Pat McAfee. The former Pro Bowl punter entered broadcasting after his NFL playing career with stops at Barstool Sports, DAZN, Westwood One, SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Radio, and FanDuel over the past decade. His daily talk show The Pat McAfee Show, first established in 2019, has gotten a large following on YouTube. According to ESPN, McAfee averages 403,000 viewers on the Google-owned streaming video service.
That same YouTube show has also been on ESPN since Sep. 7, 2023, as part of his new five-year/$85 million deal with the network (which also includes his co–hosting gig on ESPN’s popular Saturday morning college football pregame show College GameDay). It airs in the noon-2 PM slot which follows their other morning talkfest First Take. Based on a recent item by the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand, Stephen A. Smith’s show draws a daily average of 583,000 viewers (thru Jan. 3, 2024), yet McAfee retains just a little more than half of that (302,000) as its lead-out.
Delving more into his linear numbers, the following are viewerships per day for The Pat McAfee Show, from Sep. 7 through Dec. 29, and the percentage margins from the year-ago time slots (Sep. 2022 through Dec. 2022) that featured ESPN’s SportsCenter and mostly ESPN2’s This Just In, Jalen and Jacoby, and College Football Live.
ESPN noon to 2 PM
- Mondays: 323,000 viewers (-17 percent); 180,000 adults 25-54 (-10 percent)
- Tuesdays: 316,000 viewers (-6 percent); 173,000 adults 25-54 (-2 percent)
- Wednesdays: 277,000 viewers (-8 percent); 153,000 adults 25-54 (-6 percent)
- Thursdays: 274,000 viewers (-9 percent); 163,000 adults 25-54 (+2 percent)
- Fridays: 311,000 viewers (-14 percent); 178,000 adults 25-54 (no change)
ESPN2 (usually re-broadcast 3-5 PM)
- Tuesdays: 73,000 viewers (-16 percent); 38,000 adults 25-54 (+1 percent)
- Wednesdays: 88,000 viewers (-2 percent); 45,000 adults 25-54 (+4 percent)
- Thursdays: 95,000 viewers (-10 percent); 50,000 adults 25-54 (+9 percent)
- Fridays: 102,000 viewers (+2 percent); 55,000 adults 25-54 (+20 percent)
While Monday on ESPN is the show’s most-watched of the week – not uncommon for the daily ESPN studio shows in the fall to get a rating bounce by analyzing NFL Sunday action, it is double-digit percentages down from the early afternoon SportsCenter of last year.
Nonetheless, ESPN touts that its linear audience is gradually finding his show on its flagship network. In the month of December 2023, it averaged 332,000 viewers per episode, growing 20 percent from its first four weeks (Sep. 7-29).
The year-to-year key 25-54 demo declines are far less steep. Its midweek editions are merely slightly down, especially for its notable Tuesdays with weekly guest current Jets QB Aaron Rodgers. Sports beat reporters following football in the New York market regularly tune in for those appearances, although Rodgers’ talks do not exclusively stick to sports especially when it veers into odd topics such as political conspiracy theories, UFO sightings, and anti-COVID vaccine rhetoric.
His Jan. 2 guest spot caught the most attention –to the program’s largest combined linear audience across ESPN and ESPN2, to date: 445,000 total viewers on ESPN (154,000 later that day on ESPN2), according to live plus same-day data by Nielsen Media Research – when he referred to then-upcoming revelation of the list of alleged associates of Jeffrey Epstein, the now-deceased disgraced financier convicted of exploitation, sex trafficking and abuse of underage girls. Rodgers quipped about the list, “a lot of people including Jimmy Kimmel are hoping it doesn’t come out.”
Kimmel immediately responded on social media that never had any connection whatsoever with Epstein and added “Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”
When Kimmel returned to his late-night show on Jan. 8 on ABC (like ESPN, also owned by Disney), he expanded upon his Aaron Rodgers thoughts stating he “is too arrogant to know how ignorant he is. They let him host Jeopardy! for two weeks and now he knows everything.”
McAfee offered an on-air apology for Rodgers’ comments on the Jan. 3 edition which delivered 306,000 viewers (also, above-average for its usual Wednesday performance).
All the stir has also created another conflict on Jan. 5 but this time between Pat McAfee and ESPN executive Norby Williamson, claiming the aforementioned New York Post article was the exec’s act of sabotaging McAfee’s program.
Jan. 5 drew 268,000 viewers on ESPN.
Rodgers returned on McAfee for what would be the final time this NFL season on Jan. 10 to address Kimmel’s diatribe from the night prior. Rodgers admitted he did not mean for Kimmel to be labeled a pedophile nor his name to appear on Epstein’s list. He added the personal contention with the late-night host stemmed from their differing views on COVID treatments since the start of the pandemic, which segued Rodgers into describing Dr. Anthony Fauci – the former Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States – as a “spreader of misinformation.”
422,000 viewers watched on ESPN from noon to 2 p.m.; 104,000 for its ESPN2 rerun at 3-5 p.m.
