ESPN sees significant increase in 'Monday Night Football' ratings

“Monday Night Football” is often at the mercy of luck, when it comes to ratings.

Unlike the ABC/Howard Cosell days of “MNF,” there are other options. If a matchup stinks, ratings suffer. We’ve heard such nonsensical arguments for NFL ratings declines the past two years that we forget the math is generally pretty easy: good games = more viewers.

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ESPN did pretty well with its games this season, and as a result the ratings had a really nice increase.

ESPN has nice spike in ‘MNF’ ratings

ESPN said on Thursday that ratings were up eight percent from last year for “Monday Night Football.” It averaged 11.8 million viewers per game, which is stellar.

For much of ESPN’s partnership with the NFL, the league has not put its best matchups on Monday night. The league has clearly focused its efforts on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” giving that show an elite matchup each week. Flex scheduling, which isn’t available to “Monday Night Football,” helped NBC tremendously too. That has made Monday night, once the NFL’s marquee event, somewhat of an afterthought. ESPN always got good ratings because it’s the NFL, but it was no longer the must-see event it had been for decades.

ESPN still won’t get the best games; the NFL just doesn’t prioritize “MNF” anymore. But the games this season, for the most part, were better.

Monday night had some memorable moments in 2018

The peak of “Monday Night Football” was the Rams’ thrilling 54-51 win over the Chiefs on Nov. 19, a game that will likely be remembered as the greatest regular-season game in NFL history. ESPN got breakout star Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs a couple times. Even if matchups weren’t great, like Patriots-Bills, they had one marquee team in the game to drive ratings. They also caught breaks like getting the New Orleans Saints on the night Drew Brees broke the NFL’s all-time passing yardage record.

Other than the Broncos-Raiders finale, which had two teams eliminated from the playoff race, there was usually some reason to tune in for “Monday Night Football” each week. Combine that with a good, entertaining season for the NFL as a whole, and it’s no surprise ESPN’s ratings were good.

There was never a reason to even pay attention to cries about NFL ratings being down, because those were disingenuous. But NFL ratings have been better this season, and ESPN has to be pretty happy with its results.

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Frank Schwab is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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