Ratings Roundup: Peyton, Eli Manning on Monday Night Football Doubles Audience; More NFL, College Football Number By SVG Staff
Friday, September 24, 2021 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Ratings roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press releases and reports around the industry. In this week's edition, Week 2 of Peyton and Eli Manning on Monday Night Football gains traction, Chiefs-Ravens on Sunday Night Football sees its best game in three years, Alabama-Florida becomes most-watched SEC on CBS season opener in nine years, and more.
Monday Night Football Delivers 13.8 Million Viewers, Peyton and Eli Grab 1.9 Million Viewers ESPN's Monday Night Football presentation featuring the Detroit Lions at the Green Bay Packers (September 20, 8 p.m. ET) delivered a total audience of 13,808,000 viewers across ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN Deportes, the second-most-watched Week 2 MNF game since 2014.
The audience for the Packers' 35-17 victory was up 13% from Week 2 in 2019 (Cleveland at NY Jets) and up 16% from 2018 (Seattle at Chicago), the most recent Week 2 MNF games only on ESPN's cable networks. Last season, ABC propelled MNF's Week 2 telecast (New Orleans at Las Vegas) to become the most-watched MNF telecast of the season.
Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli's audience increased by 138% in week 2, as 1.9 million viewers watched their alternate telecast of Lions-Packers, up from 800,000 viewers in Week 1. The viewership is a new high for an ESPN alternate telecast since the concept was largely adopted in 2014 (more than 30 offerings). For Peyton and Eli's viewers, more than half (931,000 viewers) were in the adults 18-49 demo.
Viewership reported by Nielsen for ESPN and ESPN2 includes streaming audience across ESPN, NFL, and Yahoo Sports properties.
MNF Up Double Digits Season to Date From Both 2020 and 2019
Through two weeks, ESPN's Monday Night Football is averaging 14.6 million viewers (two games), up 19% from 2019 (three games) and 23% from 2020 (three games).
Additional Monday Night Football Highlights:
Monday Night Football was the most-watched telecast of the night among households, viewers, and all keys demo: Men 18-34, 18-49, 25-54, and 55 as well as persons 18-34, 18-49, 25-54 and P5 on ESPN.
Monday Night Football also helped ESPN become the most-watched network (broadcast and cable) in prime time among households, viewers and the same key male and people demos. (ESPN)
Chiefs-Ravens Thriller Is Most-Watched Week 2 NBC Sunday Night Football Game Since 2018 With Total Audience Delivery of Nearly 21 Million Viewers The Baltimore Ravens' thrilling 36-35 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs last night on NBC and Peacock is the most-watched Week 2 NBC Sunday Night Football game since 2018, based on preliminary data.
Chiefs-Ravens registered a Total Audience Delivery (TAD) average of approximately 20.8 million viewers across NBC TV, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL Digital platforms - marking the largest Week 2 NBC SNF audience since Giants-Cowboys in 2018 (21.0 million TAD viewers) and up 13% from last year's Week 2 SNF game (18.4 million TAD for Patriots-Seahawks, 9/20/20).
NBC's TV coverage averaged approximately 20.2 million viewers, with a peak of approximately 22.2 million viewers between 9:15-9:30 p.m. ET.
The Average Minute Audience (AMA) for last night's live stream via Peacock, NBC Sports Digital platforms, NFL Digital platforms, Chiefs and Ravens mobile properties, and Yahoo Sports mobile properties was approximately 630,000 viewers.
Viewership figures are based upon preliminary data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. Official national data for NBC will be available on Tuesday.
Last night's game (8:23 p.m.-11:22 p.m. ET) registered a national TV household rating of 10.8/26 - up 8% from last year (10.0/22).
The top 10 markets included Kansas City (48.9/75), Baltimore (30.4/54), Las Vegas (17.1/35), Milwaukee (17.0/32), Denver (16.6/35), Cleveland (16.3/33), Austin (16.2/32), Washington, D.C. (15.6/31), Dallas (15.4/31), and Sacramento (15.4/32). (NBC Sports)
NFL on CBS Continues Strong Start to Season With Impressive Week 2 Viewership The NFL on CBS continues its strong start to the season with its Week 2 viewership on Sunday, Sept. 19 averaging 24.291 million viewers in the national 4:25 PM, ET window, up 28% from Week 2 last season.
Highlighted by Dallas' last-second win over the L.A. Chargers and Tennessee's overtime win over Seattle, the 4:25 PM, ET game window is CBS's most-watched national game window in September since 2014 (Seattle-Denver, 27.296 million; 9/21/14).
And, it is the week's most-watched program on television.
Viewership for the regional 1:00 PM, ET game window delivered an average of 14.179 million viewers, up 44% from Week 2 last season. The early window was highlighted by Las Vegas-Pittsburgh as the high coverage game.
The NFL on CBS's doubleheader averaged 19.290 million viewers, up 33% from last season's Week 2 and is CBS' best doubleheader average in September since 2014 (21.458 million on 9/21/14).
After two weeks of the NFL season, CBS' average viewership is 17.927 million viewers, making it the highest viewer average on CBS for the first two weeks of the regular-season since 2015 (18.176 million in 2015).
Paramount , featuring live NFL on CBS local market games, scored an NFL regular-season viewership record for game minutes consumed for the second consecutive week while registering double-digit year-over-year growth in unique devices and streams from Week 2, 2020. Additionally, Sunday's Dallas Cowboys vs. L.A. Chargers game saw the most streamed minutes for an NFL regular-season contest ever on the service. (CBS Sports)
FOX NFL Matchups Fuel 7% Viewership Growth in Week 2 Fox's
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Ratings Roundup: Peyton, Eli Manning on Monday Night Football Doubles Audience; More NFL, College Football Number By SVG Staff 
