Usually, ESPN announces the _Monday Night Football_ ratings on Wednesday. This week, with YouTube TV customers prevented from watching Cardinals-Cowboys, ESPN may “forget” to post the numbers.
The outage blacked out the Week 9 prime-time game for millions. And it will be interesting to see what the audience ultimately was.
For now, Bryan Fischer of SI.com [has some data](https://x.com/BryanDFischer/status/1986128281482269145) regarding the impact of the dispute on ESPN/ABC college football programming.
_College GameDay_, per Fischer, fell from 2.5 million viewers the prior Saturday to 2 million. That’s a 20-percent drop.
As to the three ABC Saturday afternoon windows for games, the prior weekend had 6.6 million, 7.8 million, and 6.8 million viewers. A week later, those same windows averaged 4.5 million, 7.8 million, and 4.8 million.
The Cardinals-Cowboys game will be compared both to the prior weeks of 2025 _MNF_ games and to last year’s Week 9 contest (Buccaneers at Chiefs). Both Week 9 games had a national brand in play (Chiefs, Cowboys), so it’s somewhat apples to apples.
Of course, this year’s game will benefit from the new Nielsen Big Data + Panel formula, which is the rising tide that has lifted all broadcast boats.
Whatever the number is, we’ll find out eventually and inevitably. And if ESPN can find a way to make the number look good, the information be released at the usual time, in the usual way.