• by Wayne Friedman , November 22, 2023

Disney-ABC pulled off a rare in-season prime-time programming win with “Monday Night Football” -- the best result for the NFL series in almost 30 years, earning a Nielsen-measured 29 million average viewers for a game featuring last year’s two Super Bowl contenders, the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.

The game -- which was seen on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, NFL+ and ESPN+ -- pulled in the best results since 1996, when a game featuring the Dallas Cowboys beating the Green Bay Packers earned 31.5 million viewers.

This was helped by ABC deciding to air virtually all “MNF” games this season due to the writers' and actors' strikes. ABC pulled in 15.6 million viewers, while ESPN had 11.5 million for the night.

This time around, the Eagles beat the Chiefs 21-17 in a close game. Nine months ago in February, the Chiefs earned their second overall NFL Super Bowl title in four years with a win over the Eagles.

This rare mid-season contest between the two teams still drew major attention, largely because both teams have the best records in each of their conferences.

Estimated national TV advertising revenues for ABC were $29.4 million for the night, according to EDO Ad EnGage. National TV ad revenue estimates for ESPN came in at $14.5 million for the game.

Top-spending brands on ABC and ESPN include AT&T Wireless, Warner Bros., Capital One, IBM, Meta, Progressive Insurance, Amazon Prime Video, Google Pixel, Taco Bell, National Football League, Entyvio, Aflac, and NFL Shop.