{"id":1731,"date":"2025-11-06T18:04:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T18:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/?p=1731"},"modified":"2025-11-06T18:04:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T18:04:03","slug":"monday-night-football-ratings-down-due-to-youtube-tv-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/sports-media\/monday-night-football-ratings-down-due-to-youtube-tv-dispute\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Night Football Ratings Down Due To YouTube TV Dispute?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ESPN will tell you that Monday Night Football is fine, even without YouTube TV, but if you look beyond the surface, you might see something a little different.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN&#8217;s Press Room released on social media that Monday&#8217;s matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals was a big number: 16.2 million viewers on average.\u00a0 They report that it&#8217;s the second highest Week 9 Monday night viewership since 2011.\u00a0 But what they won&#8217;t say is that last year&#8217;s matchup on Week 9 was significantly higher.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Cardinals-Cowboys drives Monday Night Football to one of ESPN&#8217;s top Week 9 audiences <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/6LVaMbzqXH\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/6LVaMbzqXH<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ESPNPR\/status\/1986210767910412376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 5, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>As <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcsports.com\/nfl\/profootballtalk\/rumor-mill\/news\/without-youtube-tv-audience-monday-night-football-audience-drops-21-4-percent-from-week-9-2024\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk points out<\/a>, last year&#8217;s Week 9 Monday Night Football matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs averaged 20.6 million viewers.\u00a0 That means viewership this year is off more than 21 percent from 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Florio also points out that games involving the Dallas Cowboys usually rate higher than other matchups because of the team&#8217;s recognition and popularity across the country.<\/p>\n<h2>Carriage Dispute Heading Into Its Second Week<\/h2>\n<h3>Football fans could miss another week of Monday Night Football<\/h3>\n<p>It was a week ago that <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/sports-media\/espn-and-abc-pulled-from-major-tv-providers-lineup\/\" target=\"_self\">Disney decided to pull all of its content<\/a>, including ABC and ESPN, off YouTube TV due to an ongoing disagreement about carriage fees.\u00a0 The two sides have gone back and forth as to who is to blame for the issue.\u00a0 Google, who owns YouTube, says the fee Disney is looking for would force them to raise rates to their YouTube TV service again.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Disney says YouTube TV subscribers should blame Google for not having the content they are looking to consume.<\/p>\n<p>If the dispute goes into a second weekend, subscribers would again miss College Gameday on Saturday morning, plus a pair of matchups featuring Top 25 clashes: #7 BYU at #8 Texas Tech and #3 Texas A&amp;M at #22 Missouri.\u00a0 If it goes through the weekend, YouTube TV viewers would be in danger of missing the Monday Night Football matchup of Eagles at Packers.<\/p>\n<p>YouTube TV subscribers currently pay $82.99 per month.\u00a0 YouTube has said that if Disney&#8217;s content remains off the service &#8220;for an extended period,&#8221; they&#8217;ll <a  href=\"https:\/\/blog.youtube\/inside-youtube\/disney-youtube-tv\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">receive a $20 credit<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>TJ Rives and I discuss the Disney-YouTube TV standoff and more on the Last Word on Sports Media podcast<\/h3>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Dodgers Epic Game 7 World Series Win, ESPN\/Youtube TV Dispute &amp; More With Steve Carney | LWOS Media Podcast\" src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?episode_id=68424157&amp;theme=light&amp;chapters-image=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"200px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ESPN will tell you that Monday Night Football is fine, even without YouTube TV, but if you look beyond the surface, you might see something a little different. ESPN&#8217;s Press Room released on social media that Monday&#8217;s matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals was a big number: 16.2 million viewers on average.\u00a0 They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":1732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[267,238,266],"tags":[75,292,345,346],"class_list":["post-1731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-espn","category-sports-media","category-networks","tag-featured","tag-monday-night-football","tag-nielsen","tag-ratings"],"modified_by":"Steve Carney","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions\/1733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}