The first overlapping Monday Night Football doubleheader of the 2025 regular season featured two objectively non-entertaining contests that the favored teams won. The second overlapping MNF doubleheader had two close, compelling matchups that ended up being upsets.
The viewership for the two nights wasn’t much different.
On Wednesday, ESPN announced that the audience during the Bills-Falcons, Bears-Commanders overlap was 21.9 million. For Jets-Dolphins and Bengals-Broncos in Week 4, it was 21.4 million.
Also, the Week 4 Bengals-Broncos game on ABC fared better than the far more competitive and interesting Week 6 Bears-Commanders game on ABC: 13.2 million vs. 12.9 million.
Bills-Falcons attracted 10 million on ESPN. The Week 4 ESPN-only Jets-Dolphins average audience wasn’t announced; Sports Business Journal reported that it was 8.467 million.
While a pair of partially simultaneous games gives ESPN the opportunity to push a bigger number than either game would have generated if it were the only one televised by ESPN/ABC/ESPN2/ESPN Deportes, how much larger is the 21.9 million two-game audience than the number that one game and one game only would have seen?
Last week, Chiefs-Jaguars did 22.3 million. In Week 3, Lions-Ravens did 22.8 million. How close to 21.9 million would Bills-Falcons or Bears-Commanders have come?
That brings us back to the question of whether having overlapping Monday night games is worth it. Fans accustomed to watching one game on Monday nights have to split their attention between two games. Which audio should be turned on? (I tried to listen to both on Monday night. Until I realized after about 45 seconds that hearing two games makes it impossible to listen to either one.)
But it’s not about the fans. It’s about maximizing the eyeballs, and juicing the eventual numbers.
Fortunately for fans, there will be no more simultaneous doubleheaders in 2025. Next Monday, it’s a back-to-back Buc-Lions/Texans-Seahawks twin bill.
Good news? It’s six hours of standalone football. Bad news? For those for whom the clock will say 10:00 p.m. when the second game starts, it will be a very late night/early morning.
