Sports Media World Reacts To Mannings’ New TV Ratings
The ESPN2 broadcast with Peyton and Eli Manning is becoming very popular. Last night’s Green Bay Packers–Detroit Lions broadcast built on some very solid numbers from Week 1.
Last week, 15.3 million viewers tuned in to see the Las Vegas Raiders’ dramatic Week 1 win over the Baltimore Ravens. 800,000 watched the Manning-led broadcast of the game. It wasn’t a huge number, but the broadcast drew some attention for the famous quarterback brothers’ comments and analysis during the games.
With 13.8 million watching Packers-Lions, the Week 2 Monday Night Football ratings were down slightly from last week, but remained quite high for ESPN. The network is flaunting it as the second-most watched game since 2014, and up year over year from both 2018 and 2019. What’s more exciting, is the Peyton & Eli broadcast was way up.
ESPN PR announced that 1.9 million viewers tuned in to ESPN2. That was a 138-percent increase from last week, a very impressive mark.
via @ESPNPR pic.twitter.com/n1EEhYtBK1
— Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) September 21, 2021
The regular Monday Night Football team has received pretty muted reviews over the last few years. The network had reportedly attempted to land Peyton Manning for the analyst gig, though he’s held off on taking a traditional broadcast job, opting for shows like Peyton’s Places and Detail on ESPN+, and now this special edition of MNF.
We’re still very early in the season, but the ratings so far don’t lie: people want to see the Mannings on the call. We’ll see if ESPN could eventually convince Peyton (or Eli) to enter the booth, but it is hard to imagine that they won’t expand on this concept at the very least.
This is pretty remarkable. 800,00 people watched Peyton and Eli in Week 1. Last night, 1.8 million people watched them. Very impressive. https://t.co/DlGsVH2PNs
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) September 21, 2021
Wow! How many shows have ever doubled from week 1 to 2? And that was with a pretty boring 4th quarter.
I'd be FASCINATED to see the minute-by-minute numbers given the rotating guests… https://t.co/D1lPmM5R7S
— ✏️Jacob Feldman (@JacobFeldman4) September 21, 2021
Let’s cut to the chase here – folks like the Mannings. That’s only thing that makes this alternative broadcast different from all the other alternative broadcasts they’ve done. https://t.co/XoqdK7omkE
— Joe Ovies (@joeovies) September 21, 2021
My guess was that they’d settle into the 15% of total range by season’s end. Starting to think it could trend towards 20-25%. It’s not a perfect broadcast but it is far better than the ESPN crew https://t.co/V5HcqDP4q9
— Dante Guarneri (@danteguarneri) September 21, 2021
The Peyton & Eli Monday Night Football broadcast will air eight more times this season. It’ll be fascinating to see if these ratings continue to rise, or if this was a one-time bump based on people learning about this new way to watch the game.
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