ESPN’s 2023 Monday Night Football season debut was a record breaker, as more than 22.6 million viewers watched the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets across ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPN+, NFL+ and ESPN Deportes.
- The viewership of 22,644,000 million surpasses the 2009 Green Bay Packers at Minnesota Vikings game, which featured Brett Favre vs his former team, as the most-watched ESPN Monday Night Football game (21.8 million viewers).
- Ironically, that game also featured then-Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who also started this week’s Monday Night Football game for the Jets before suffering a season-ending injury on his first drive.
- The record audience peaked at 25.2 million viewers in the first half (9-9:15 p.m. ET), when Buffalo took a 10-3 lead late in the second quarter.
- The Bills-Jets is up 14% from the 2022 Monday Night Football opener (19.8 million, Denver at Seattle) – an audience which was a record-setting MNF Week 1 game at the time.
- Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli on ESPN2 had an audience of 1.52, up from the show’s 2022 Week 1 audience.
- The alternate presentation show now holds ESPN’s 20 most-watched alternate telecasts (more than 100).
- Since the start of the 2022 season, Monday Night Football has now delivered three of its five most-watched Monday games (out of nearly 300 games – beginning in 2006).
- Looking at September games, ESPN now has surpassed 19 million viewers for each of its standalone game in 2022 and 2023.
- This week will see two Monday Night Football games:
- The 1-0 New Orleans Saints travel to Carolina to take on Bryce Young and the Panthers on ESPN and ESPN2
- Nick Chubb and the Cleveland Browns head to Pittsburgh to challenge TJ Watt and the Steelers on ABC and ESPN+.