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Monday Night Football TV Ratings: Commanders–49ers Draws 17.9 Million Viewers
ESPN’s combined audience includes six outlets; the package’s six-week average stands at 19 million viewers.
The Washington Commanders–San Francisco 49ers game averaged 17.9 million viewers on Monday Night Football, ESPN announced October 21. The teams played October 19 at Levi’s Stadium.
The audience combines ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, NFL Network, ESPN Deportes and NFL+. ESPN attributed the figures to Nielsen Big Data + Panel. The 17.9 million is the combined game audience across those outlets, rather than the audience for ESPN’s main channel alone.
ESPN said it was Monday Night Football’s second-largest Week 6 audience since the network began carrying the package in 2006. The only larger Week 6 game in that span was Cowboys–Chargers in 2023.
Through six weeks of the 2026 season, Monday Night Football was averaging 19 million viewers, up 23% from the equivalent point in 2025, according to the same release. That is a season-to-date comparison; it does not mean Commanders–49ers itself grew 23% against last year’s Week 6 game.
The latest result follows the 19.3 million average ESPN reported through Week 5. The six-week average is lower, even as the year-over-year increase is larger, because both the current-season sample and the corresponding comparison period have changed.
