• Tampa Bay at Detroit Up 19% Year-Over-Year
• MNF Doubleheader Averages 12.7 Million Viewers Across More than Six Hours

ESPN’s Monday Night Football Week 7 aired a true doubleheader, which included a new record viewership for the first game, as the Buccaneers and Lions (7 p.m. ET) began the night, followed by the Texans and Seahawks (10 p.m. ET).

The Tampa at Detroit game generated an audience of 18.8 million viewers, making it ESPN’s most-watched MNF Week 7 game ever (2006 – present) and up 19% from last season’s early MNF Week 7 game (Ravens at Buccaneers), which also aired on ESPN and ABC. Additionally, the Buccaneers-Lions game is ESPN’s most-watched individual game on weeks with multiple MNF games, whether a true doubleheader or two games with staggered start times (54 games in total).

Please note: ESPN has aired multiple MNF games in 27 weeks since 2006, with 17 doubleheaders from 2006 through 2020 and 2025, and 10 weeks of multiple games with staggered start times from 2022 to present.

Accounting for both games (7 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.), ESPN averaged 12.7 million viewers for the doubleheader, its second-best average across two games in a single night since 2015, trailing only this season’s Week 2 doubleheader (an average of 13.5 million viewers), and notably surpassing the ten weeks of ‘2 games, 1 night’ under the current NFL rights agreement (2022 – present) and previous Week 1 doubleheaders in the last decade.

Source: Nielsen Big Data + Panel