Most don’t like the overlapping doubleheaders on Monday night. Disney apparently does; two games apparently generate bigger ratings than one.
ESPN announced that Jaguars-Bills (on ESPN) and Commanders-Bengals (on ABC and ESPN+) averaged “more than 19 million viewers” during the two-hour overlap of the two games. For most of the two-hour overlap, Jags-Bills was not a compelling game.
The Commanders-Bengals game averaged 13.2 million viewers. The number for the full Jaguars-Bills game wasn’t specified, which likely means it fell significantly below whatever ESPN had hoped.
The late game averaged 15.2 million viewers during the exciting final 45 minutes from 10:15 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. ET. Frankly, that’s a disappointing number for a three-letter network.
So why do it? It extends the total viewing window for one or both games to roughly four hours. But it seems as if the numbers would be better if they just televised one game and put it on all three networks — ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2.
Then again, if last night’s one game had been Jaguars-Bills, many might have turned the TV off with nearly two quarters to play.