ESPN and the NFL have nothing to complain about when it comes to the “Monday Night Football” ratings in 2018 because they were up big time.
The sports network released the following data on the “Monday Night Football” games from the 2018 season:
ESPN’s Monday Night Football finished the 2018 NFL regular season up eight percent year-over-year with an average viewership of 11,647,000 over 17 games (16 weeks).
In addition to the eight percent gain over 2017 (10,788,000), MNF also increased two percent vs. 2016 (11,390,000).
“MNF” was also the most watched series on cable, and finished 2018 with 9 of the top-20 cable broadcasts. (RELATED: Here Are The Best Moments From Week 15 Of The NFL Season)
View this post on Instagram
As I’ve pointed out about a million times at this point, the NFL has seen a nice increase across the board in their ratings this season. They had several primetime games that put up monster numbers, especially the “MNF” game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs.
There’s no doubt at all that the NFL has turned the ship around ever since Kaepernick nearly tanked the league when he started the trend of kneeling for the anthem.
View this post on Instagram
It turns out that when you focus on giving consumers great matchups and check the politics at the door, then people are more inclined to tune in. Who could have ever guessed that would be the outcome? It’s almost so simple that it’s hard to believe.
The high octane offenses certainly don’t hurt either. There was honestly a time when I wondered whether or not the league would ever recover from the damage done by the anthem protests.
Clearly, the answer is yes because they’re putting up huge numbers these days.