{"id":907667,"date":"2026-05-23T05:12:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T10:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/didnt-work-nfl-officially-admits-monday-night-football-mistake-with-espn-as-roger-goodells-office-ends-doubleheaders\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T05:12:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T10:12:57","slug":"didnt-work-nfl-officially-admits-monday-night-football-mistake-with-espn-as-roger-goodells-office-ends-doubleheaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/23\/didnt-work-nfl-officially-admits-monday-night-football-mistake-with-espn-as-roger-goodells-office-ends-doubleheaders\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDidn\u2019t Work\u201d: NFL Officially Admits Monday Night Football Mistake With ESPN as Roger Goodell\u2019s Office Ends Doubleheaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Football <\/p>\n

\n

The NFL is finally admitting that its \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d experiment was a chaotic mess. Over the last few seasons, the league forced fans into an agonizing game-day dilemma. The back-to-back action at 8 PM and then at 10 PM on Monday resulted in a scheduling overlap. This often left fans divided between the choices. Now, Roger Goodell\u2019s office is scrambling to clean up its scheduling strategy for the primetime football broadcast.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Watch What\u2019s Trending Now!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cYes, the Monday night doubleheaders are a thing of the past,\u201d NFL broadcast planner Mike North said. \u201cI don\u2019t know why that didn\u2019t work. Quite honestly, I thought it was fine. I thought it was good for us. That Monday night game, if it wasn\u2019t your game on Monday, it would\u2019ve been Sunday at 1, among eight, nine, or 10 other games. You probably weren\u2019t going to watch it anyway. Having it on Monday, a national broadcast\u2026 it just didn\u2019t work. The fans didn\u2019t appreciate it, and it probably wasn\u2019t a good use of an NFL asset.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Monday Night Football doubleheaders started in 2006\u00a0 when ESPN first acquired the primetime slot. However, over the years, fans have complained about the games overlapping, which led the league to finally decide to scrap it during the annual meeting in April. NFL\u2019s Executive Vice President of Media, Hans Schroeder, acknowledged that the format left fans feeling conflicted about which matchup to watch.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"Football<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n

Imago<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/clipPath><\/defs><\/svg><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last season, during Weeks 2, 4, 6, and 7, the mixed scheduling benefited neither broadcast. <\/span>Initially, the four games ESPN traded back to the NFL were supposed to land on YouTube and Netflix. That plan fell apart when YouTube refused to share the games. After YouTube pulled out, the games went into the open market. Fox Network jumped at the chance and bought broadcasting rights for one of the games.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This set up a historic Week 10 with the first-ever broadcast TV primetime tripleheader. NBC got another game, and Netflix scooped up the rest to expand its own package.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

North explained that two of those four games were assigned to Netflix for a Wednesday night and a Week 18 Saturday matchup. The remaining two went to traditional broadcast networks. He stated that the league isn\u2019t moving everything to streaming platforms. He added that the new Monday night format allows everyone to focus on one marquee game simulcast on ABC instead of dividing their resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

Historically, Monday Night Football ratings see a massive boost whenever ABC simulcasts across networks, including the ESPN feed. In 2024, the Week 1 broadcast pulled in 20.5 million viewers across ESPN, ABC, and ESPN2, but viewership plummeted to just over 15 million the next week when ABC wasn\u2019t part of the broadcast.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This streamlined approach comes at a perfect time. ESPN will broadcast its first-ever Super Bowl at the end of the 2026 season. The network has every reason to make Monday night football a must-watch television again. However, there are still a lot of questions about the media giants\u2019 treatment of the NFL Network.<\/span><\/p>\n

Football Longtime NFL Broadcaster Suggests ESPN is Dismantling NFL Network<\/b><\/h2>\n

Disney\u2019s massive $3 billion deal with the NFL officially handed the keys of NFL Network over to ESPN on April 1. Under the deal, ESPN officially acquired the NFL Network, NFL Fantasy, and the distribution rights to RedZone. In exchange, the NFL has received a 10% equity stake in ESPN. However, the NFL continues to produce and own the RedZone channel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Initially, the network produced its own independent coverage of the 2026 NFL Draft. However, viewers noticed in Thursday night\u2019s regular-season schedule that the ESPN SportsCenter Special was simply simulcast across the NFL Network. Now, Longtime broadcaster Rich Eisen, who has worked across both platforms, recently addressed the corporate takeover and how it has affected the NFL Network<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe games are still on NFL Network, there\u2019s seven of them,\u201d Eisen said on The Dan Patrick Show. \u201cFive international and two others. I have been told that the Sunday NFL GameDay Morning that I\u2019m hosting, is the same, and so is the [Scouting] Combine and the draft. We\u2019re still going to have the Combine, and we\u2019re still going to have the draft. The rest of it, I mean, we didn\u2019t have a schedule-release show for the first time in years. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s an indication.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For over 20 years, the NFL Network provided football coverage of the highest quality with a lot of different programs. However, just over a year since being taken over by ESPN, there are already questions about its quality.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, ESPN is one of the biggest media platforms, but the NFL Network had its own detailed coverage, breaking news, and sharing analysis when it came to football. While ESPN is a multi-sport platform, if they want to maximise from the landmark deal with the NFL Network, they will have to try to maintain the quality and continue adding nuance to their coverage of the game, especially with them having the rights to the Super Bowl in 2027.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a> Maribel Mongold<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NFL is finally admitting that its \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d experiment was a chaotic mess. Over the last few seasons, the league forced fans into an agonizing game-day dilemma. The back-to-back action at 8 PM and then at 10 PM on Monday resulted in a scheduling overlap. This often left fans divided between the choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":907668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23888,3790,34197],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-907667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-didnt","8":"category-football","9":"category-work"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}