It’s beginning to look like fans have gotten bored of the ManningCast alternate broadcast of ESPN’s Monday Night Football. The numbers certainly suggest as much.
According to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, the ManningCast for Monday’s game between the New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams generated just 661,000 viewers – a drop of nearly 50,000 from the Week 1 broadcast.
“Manningcast had 661K viewers during the second week of MNF, according to a source,” Marchand wrote on X.
However, Marchand also noted that it was a slightly higher percent of the overall viewership, moving from 3.0-percent in Week 1 to 3.4-percent in Week 2. Even so, it’s a pretty rough number for a show that ESPN has been trying to boost hype for over the past couple of years.
The ManningCast is off for Week 3 but will return in Week 4 for the Falcons-Saints game followed by the Week 5 Bills-Rams game.
Why the dip?
Fans had plenty of ideas for why the ManningCast has lost its luster. The biggest reason fans have suggested is that the two Super Bowl QBs aren’t talking about the game and are just chatting with celebrities that they don’t care for.
“I used to make it scheduled viewing, when the two of them talked ball and gave valuable insight. Now its ‘A and B list celebrity of the week’ and it sucks,” one user replied on X.
“That’s because it sucks. Get rid of it and do what Amazon Prime does and show the game with the all-22 camera instead so people can see what the (expletive) is going on,” wrote another.
“Tell your source to tell espn that we just want to hear the Mannings talk ball, not blather on with 15 random guests a game,” a third wrote.
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“Most of the interview segments are awful. The sound is always delayed so they’re just talking over each other or there’s an awkward pause. Should be 1 football guest a week. The celebrities are terrible.”
“I would exclusively watch it if it was just Peyton, Eli, and a guest QB each week just talking football from a QB’s perspective all game.”
Clearly the fans know what they want. The question is whether ESPN will give it to them in order to save the show’s ratings.
