ESPN announced that from this point forward, its broadcast of the annual NFL All-Star game will be simulcast on its broadcast television partner, ABC. The move creates cause to speculate about whether ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcasts could follow the same path.
With the Pro Bowl returning to ABC, the lone remaining cable-only NFL television product is Monday Night Football. A number of factors could entice the NFL and Disney, who controls both ABC and ESPN, to simulcast MNF games as well.
According to Sports Media Watch, ratings for the Pro Bowl have declined steadily for over half of a decade, but that was hastened in 2015 by putting the game exclusively on ESPN, a.k.a. on cable only. Coupled with an overall decline in television ratings across the board for the NFL, it was clear the league felt it needed to make an adjustment for one of the league’s marquee events.
Simulcasting the game allows Disney and the NFL to take advantage of a much-expanded potential audience. Additionally, it allows ABC to have content which has the potential to outperform most of the other programming options. Though the NFL may not be the guaranteed ratings champ it once was, it still commands audiences larger than most other television products.
For those same reasons, it could make sense to similarly simulcast Monday Night Football games. Last season saw similarly declining ratings for Monday Night games as well, which like the Pro Bowl, were only shown on ESPN and its streaming platform. A similar problem could command a similar solution. MNF would probably outperform any other programming ABC would feature on Monday nights.
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Disney and the NFL might treat next season’s Pro Bowl broadcast as a test for this fix to the ratings problem. It’s unlikely that this change alone will put the ratings for the game back to where they were before this slide began, but all the interested parties may be looking for is improvement. Simulcasting before a broadcast audience should produce an uptick, and if it’s determined to be significant, Monday Night Football could be next.