Welcome to Phase 3 of this season’s NFL “Monday Night Football” viewership experiment.
These are two games at the same time on two channels, but under the same company umbrella. Week 14 features the Green Bay Packers at the New York Giants on ABC and the Tennessee Titans at the Miami Dolphins on ESPN. Both contests begin at 8:15 p.m. ET.
The games were originally scheduled when the league released the 2023 schedule earlier this year. But recently, ESPN announced that “Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli,” or ManningCast for the less formal audience, will be simulcast on ESPN2.
(All three broadcasts can be viewed on ESPN+. The Titans-Dolphins match can also be viewed on ESPN Deportes.)
The NFL had already played two Monday night games in Week 2 (New Orleans Saints at Carolina Panthers and Cleveland Browns at Pittsburgh Steelers) and Week 3 (Philadelphia Eagles at Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams at Cincinnati Bengals). However, there was an hour difference between the start times of the two games each evening.
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But why is the league double-dipping when it comes to MNF? According to the league and ESPN, the idea is to get real-time data on viewer interest in the start times of the “Monday Night Football” doubleheader.
“We'll learn more about what optimizes best, and I think by next year we'll continue to focus on getting the largest viewership between the two games,” Burke Magnus, president of content at ESPN, said in September told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic. “We will learn whether it is better to start with the ABC game, the ESPN game or vice versa. … In Week 14 we're doing both games at the same time. The idea is: Can we unite the entire audience and do it a little bit like we did in the old days of college football, where we simultaneously create national and regional appeal and leverage our networks to do that all in one window to do? Then it becomes a kind of super audience total.”
Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president of media sales, called it a unique opportunity to explore options with a single broadcast partner.
“We have a unique opportunity to work with a single partner and two really strong national distribution assets in ESPN and ABC, and we want to continue to innovate and create a new viewing experience,” Schroeder told Deitsch in September. “So you’ll see more look-ins between games. You'll see more coverage between the two games, you'll see things at halftime in the first few weeks covering the other game. The whole desire is how do we create a new, different and compelling way for fans to watch games, and how do we continue to test and innovate along the way? We’re thrilled to be working side by side with Disney.”
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When analyzing viewership data, as with all games, other factors will be considered beyond start times, including the competitiveness of each game, the market size for each team playing, whether the game featured national stars or traditional popular teams, and the estimate every socket.
Then there's the ManningCast wrinkle.
Peyton and Eli will watch both games simultaneously and commentate whatever happens. The show usually features guests, but that element may be eliminated this week as they juggle two games.
So why throw the ManningCast into the fray? It's an opportunity to grow this brand. ESPN considers the ManningCast an additive broadcast, so any opportunity to introduce MNF to more viewers is worth exploring. The week is already unique and experimental, so it's a good opportunity.
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(Photo: Rob Carr/Getty Images)