ESPN’s Monday Night Football sets viewing record
October 25, 2023
ESPN’s Monday Night Football presentation of San Francisco 49ers at Minnesota Vikings on October 23rd delivered more than 18.6 million viewers (ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, and NFL+) across the US, driving the television franchise to another weekly record during the 2023 season.
The audience of 18,642,000 viewers is MNF’s best Week 7 audience in the ESPN era (2006 – present), surpassing two Giants-Cowboys games, one from 2010 (17,953,000 viewers) and another in 2006 (16,028,000 viewers). The 49ers-Vikings matchup was up 57 per cent from MNF Week 7 in 2022 (11.9 million viewers for Bears at Patriots).
Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli (ESPN2) delivered an audience of 1,068,000 viewers, the alternate telecast’s 23rd consecutive episode with more than a million viewers.
Season-to-date, Monday Night Football is averaging 15.5 million, up 10 per cent inclusive of all linear games (9 games in 2023 vs 8 games in 2022), despite the Week 3 presentation of two games this autumn vs last season’s singular game in the same week. Excluding this year’s Week 3, Monday Night Football is up 19 per cent year-over-year, averaging 16.7 million viewers.