In a perplexing move that left many scratching their heads, the Disney empire decided to roll out a split Monday night football extravaganza, featuring the Ravens facing off against the Buccaneers on not one, not two, but three different channels – ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 – while relegating the Chargers-Cardinals showdown solely to ESPN+.
To say that this decision was met with confusion would be an understatement. As one sports enthusiast put it, “It made no sense.” And to add insult to injury, the game on ESPN+ failed to draw the kind of numbers that would make any network exec jump for joy.
This seems to be par for the course for ESPN’s public relations playbook these days. Rather than facing the music and owning up to lackluster viewership, the network has adopted a strategy of radio silence when it comes to discussing less-than-stellar ratings. It’s a risky move that hasn’t gone unnoticed by critics.
On the brighter side of things, the Ravens-Bucs matchup did manage to pull in solid numbers, with “more than 16 million” viewers tuning in. (A somewhat cryptic figure, leaving us to wonder just how many more than 16 million actually watched the game.) For comparison, last week’s Bills-Jets game saw a slightly higher viewership at 17.3 million.
Of course, the decision to split the broadcast between traditional television and a streaming service likely had a hand in diluting the overall numbers for the Ravens-Bucs game. But rather than reveal the extent of this “cannibalization,” ESPN opted to keep mum on the topic, leaving fans and analysts alike in the dark about the true viewership figures.
