By Anthony Crupi
Sports Media Reporter
The NFL has given its lone backsliding TV window a big boost, as ESPN’s Monday Night Football package will be enhanced by six additional simulcasts on the Disney broadcast flagship ABC.
In light of a scheduling update announced Friday, the big reach of ABC will supplement ESPN’s deliveries on a half-dozen additional nights, including the Oct. 14 Buffalo Bills-New York Jets showdown and a Nov. 4 meeting between Super Bowl LV antagonists Kansas City and Tampa Bay. Future enhancements will help Disney draw bigger audiences in late November—Texans-Cowboys (Nov. 18) and Ravens-Chargers (Nov. 25)—and during the week of Christmas, as ABC will backstop ESPN’s Dec. 23 Saints-Packers telecast.
All told, 13 MNF games will have aired on ABC by the time the regular season closes out, a tally that includes two standalone September broadcasts. While that’s still shy of the 19 Monday night games ABC aired in 2023, that heavy network-TV lift was facilitated by the writers’ strike that sidelined the release of last fall’s scripted shows.
ABC’s October surprise retroactively proves out Disney ad sales chief Rita Ferro’s spring forecast for a robust slate of MNF simulcasts. In May, as the NFL was putting the finishing touches on the 2024-25 schedule, Ferro told Sportico she believed ABC would land as many as 10 games.
Per Nielsen’s coverage estimates, ABC’s signals are received by 66% of all U.S. TV households, which works out to 83.02 million homes. That’s approximately 15.5 million homes more than ESPN’s most recent subscriber tally, and as we saw last season, that enhanced reach translates to a significant gains in the ratings.
Last year’s emergency measures helped boost MNF deliveries by 29% versus the previous year, as ESPN and ABC combined for an average draw of 17.32 million viewers per game, up from 13.41 million in the previous season. ABC’s impact immediately jumped off the page after last year’s Bills-Jets opener, as Aaron Rodgers’ short-lived debut with Gang Green averaged 22.62 million viewers. The ABC-ESPN battery would go on to top that number in Week 11, scaring up a record 28.96 million fans with the Eagles’ 21-17 victory over the Chiefs, which earned bragging rights as the NFL’s seventh most-watched regular-season outing of 2023.
ABC’s exclusive Christmas night broadcast of the Ravens-49ers throwdown delivered another 27.61 million viewers, good for ninth place on the league’s list of top draws.
Through its first seven games, MNF is averaging 13.07 million viewers, down 10% versus the year-ago 14.52 million, when ABC had already played a supporting or starring role in five of Disney’s seven NFL productions. Season-to-date, the network has carried three MNF games. Despite the year-over-year drop, MNF trails only NBC’s Sunday Night Football as the highest-rated primetime show in the dollar demo, serving up 4.87 million adults 18-49 per game. By way of comparison, the top-rated primetime entertainment program, ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, is currently averaging 942,653 adults under 50.
All told, football accounts for each of the top three primetime slots of the young season, with NBC’s Sunday night package averaging 20.48 million linear-TV viewers (or 23.3 million when the streaming deliveries are factored in), of whom 6.27 million are members of the 18-49 demo. ABC’s Saturday Night Football ranks third in the demo, with an average draw of 1.63 million adults under 50.
The NFL thus far has managed to keep its ratings up in the face of a heated political environment and a late-blooming hurricane season that has destroyed thousands of homes and left millions without electricity in markets across the Gulf Coast and further inland. More than 2 million homes lost power in Florida Wednesday night as Hurricane Milton slammed into the Sunshine State; among the hardest-hit areas include the No. 11 Tampa/St. Petersburg market, which is home to 2.22 million TV homes, or 1.8% of the national base of 125.8 million households.
According to aggregate data culled from the utilities serving the DMA, at least 893,206 homes in Tampa/St. Pete remain without power as of Friday afternoon. The market covers a huge swath of real estate, ranging from Citrus County on the northwest central coast down to Highlands County in the center of the state.
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