ESPN ending Monday Night Football simulcast on ABC for 2024 season

The Monday Night Football television ratings are a near guarantee to drop this fall. But it’s not because fans are losing interest in the NFL.

Rather, ESPN will no longer put all MNF games on ABC via simulcast. ABC needed content, any content, last fall because of the Hollywood writers’ strike. The work stoppage forced the networks to push back their new television programming to the spring. So MNF was a welcome gift for ABC.

John Ourand of Puck broke the news, although ESPN has yet to officially confirm the halt of the simulcasts.

.@Ourand_Puck's sources say Monday Night Football will not be simulcast every week on ABC this year as it was last year due to writers strike.

ABC will still simulcast 5-6 games and have 3 exclusives that won't be on ESPN.

— Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) May 3, 2024

MNF games averaged 17.4 million viewers per game

Now, this news does not mean that there will be no MNF games on ABC. Next season, ABC likely will have at least two Monday night simulcasts with ESPN. There also will be three exclusive MNF games on ABC when there are doubleheaders. Plus, there will be two MNF games on Saturday during week 18. None of these games have been revealed, as yet.

Deadline reported that the 2023 Monday Night Football slate was the most-watched season since the games switched to ESPN in 2006. Each MNF game averaged 17.4 million viewers, which was a 33 percent increase from 2022.

The most-watched game actually was a special MNF game on a Saturday night. That’s when 26.1 million people tuned in to watch the Cowboys hold onto a 20-19 victory over the Lions on Dec. 30. Overall, it was the third-most watched game of the entire season.

NBC’s Sunday Night Football games are No. 1 each week

The NFL telecasts are spread out over ESPN, NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC and Amazon Prime. The Sunday Night Football games are the most-watched of the week. In fact, the games have the largest TV audiences of the entire viewing week. The games averaged 21.4 million viewers each Sunday. That represented its best viewership in eight years and an 8 percent increase from 2022.

Meanwhile, CBS averaged 19.35 million each Sunday. That made the 2023 season the most watched on the network since 1998. It also was a 5 percent increase in audience from 2022.

Fox’s audience averaged 19.42 million. The number declined by 2 percent from 2022. But the late afternoon Fox games ticked up to 24.62 million. And that was a 2 percent increase from the year before.

The Thursday Night Football audiences also were up. The 16-game schedule averaged 11.86 million viewers on Prime. It was the second season the games appeared on Amazon. And audiences were up 24 percent.