BRISTOL, Conn.—ESPN’s presentation of the Super Bowl LVII rematch between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs on November 21 was the most-watched Monday Night Football game in 27 years, drawing more than 29 million viewers (ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPN+, ESPN Deportes and NFL+), the network said. 

The audience of 29,021,000 viewers is the television franchise’s best – and The Walt Disney Company’s best – since 1996, when the Green Bay at Dallas drew 31.5 million. That also made it the best in more than 450 games and the entire ESPN era of Monday Night Football, ESPN said. 

The Eagles-Chiefs was also the most-watched telecast since the teams faced off in Super Bowl LVII (Feb. 12, 2023), making it the most-watched NFL game this season across all networks. Dating back to the 2022 regular season, Eagles-Chiefs is the most-watched NFL game in nearly a full calendar year (Thanksgiving 2022).

ESPN also reported  that: 

• The audience peaked at 31.2 million viewers
• Peyton and Eli: Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli generated an audience of 1.9 million, the franchise’s best in more than two years.
• Monday Night Countdown: ESPN’s pregame show averaged 1.8 million viewers, MNC’s best audience of the season.
• With the record-breaking ESPN MNF audience, ESPN has now delivered its two most-watched Monday Night Football games ever during the 2023 season. The Week 11 viewership topped ESPN’s Week 1 audience of 22.6 million (Bills-Jets), which set a record at the time.

NEW YORK—Amazon’s Prime Video is reporting that Prime Video’s 2023 Thursday Night Football opener between the Vikings and Eagles set an all-time record as the most-streamed NFL game in history.

According to Nielsen’s custom Integrated Live Streaming Report, Prime Video averaged 16.6 million viewers (AMA) across all media platforms during the Vikings-Eagles showdown, as the defending NFC Champions notched their second win of the season.

Nielsen’s National TV Ratings (panel only) reported that the game was up +16% in total viewers over the comparable game in 2022 (15.1 million vs. 13.0 million), and ranks as the most-watched TNF game ever on Prime Video.  Among the key demos, the game was up +15% year-over-year among P18-49 (7.6 million vs. 6.6 million), and up +17% among P18-34 (3.5 million vs. 3.0 million) from last season’s TNF Chargers-Chiefs season opener (9/15/22).

The median age of the TNF audience was 47, which is 7 years younger than the NFL average on linear networks through the first week of the season (54).

“We’re so excited to have kicked off our second season of exclusive TNF coverage by setting new all-time audience records. Building on last year’s success, our team worked tirelessly this offseason to raise the bar and enhance the viewing experience even further, so to see this kind of response and turnout from fans is very gratifying,” said Jay Marine, VP, Global Head of Sports, Amazon. “We are thrilled with the continued growth and performance of TNF, the ways in which we are innovating in the space, and the value our sports portfolio provides to Prime members.”

Amazon said that the most-streamed NFL game record is based on device AMA, inclusive of Prime Video, Twitch and NFL+.

Nielsen’s custom Integrated Live Streaming Report combines Amazon’s first party viewing signal aggregated from the millions of connected TV devices streaming TNF with Nielsen’s panel-based TV measurement. Nielsen then includes their out of home (OOH), local station (OTA), and computer/mobile measurement to provide a comprehensive, cross-platform view of the TNF audience. Nielsen's integration of first party viewing signal into its accredited panel measurement is currently undergoing review by the Media Rating Council and is presently not accredited.

Additional Nielsen National TV Ratings highlights include:

• TNF on Prime Video outperformed all other programming on broadcast and cable television Thursday night, among total viewers, P18-49 and P18-34.
• The Sept. 14 game reached a peak audience of 17.0M between 9:15-9:30PM ET.
• For the week beginning Monday, Sept. 11, TNF on Prime Video ranks as No. 1 program of the week among P18-34 across broadcast and cable.
• TNF on Prime Video was the most-watched program of the night across broadcast or cable, out-delivering the No. 2 program by +372% in total viewers (15.1 million vs. 3.2 million).

 New data from SponsorshipUnited shows that the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs head into Super Bowl LVII with impressive gains off the field in their sponsorship efforts during their championship-caliber seasons. 

More than over 40% of sponsorship, media, and vendor deals for both the Chiefs and Eagles were new deals in the 2022 season. In terms of total sponsorship deals for the season, the Eagles scored over 100 and the Chiefs landed over 60. SponsorshipUnited reported. 

SponsorUnited, which tracks 1.1 million sponsorships, media and endorsements across 250,000 brands and properties spanning sports, media, music and entertainment, also reported that three of the top 10 most-endorsed NFL athletes across social media this season are playing in the Super Bowl.  Data was analyzed from the NFL training camp into the regular season, spanning June 2022 to January 2023. 

Top Sponsors for the Eagles, by volume of deals, included: Lincoln Financial; Bud Light (also a partner of the League); Firstrust Bank; Miller Lite; and Toyota. 

Top Sponsors for the Chiefs, by volume of deals, included: GEHA (Government Employees Health Association); Bud Light (also a partner of the League); T-Mobile; CommunityAmerica Credit Union; and Hy-Vee. 

“Playing in the Super Bowl helps both teams in a myriad of ways—one being the ability to deepen the connection with global audiences, as NFL teams were awarded international marketing rights just this year,” said Bob Lynch, founder and CEO of SponsorUnited. “Gaining this level of exposure helps activate and grow their fanbases in numerous countries outside of the U.S. For the Eagles, this means even greater exposure and affinity in Australia, New Zealand and Ghana, and for the Chiefs even more so, as they share their designated rights to Germany and Mexico with several other NFL teams.”

The researchers also found that three of the top 10 athletes in the NFL—ranked by total social endorsements—will be playing in the Super Bowl: JuJu Smith Schuster and Travis Kelce of the Chiefs, and Devonta Smith of the Eagles. Schuster has 15 brand endorsements while Kelce has 14 and Smith has 11. Kelce’s brother, Jason, is also playing in the Super Bowl for the Eagles but is not among the most-endorsed NFL athletes this season. 

Between the two teams, the Chiefs quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, is the most-followed player on social media with 8.1M+ followers across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Although Mahomes does not rank among the top 10 NFL players in terms of social endorsements, he is fifth among the most-followed players in the NFL. He has nine brand endorsements and 32 branded posts on his social platforms, the researchers said. 

MONTREAL—Haivision Systems has announced that the Philadelphia Eagles are leveraging its ultra-low latency Makito X4 video encoder and decoder pair to stream synchronized multi-camera live video feeds from remote venues back to their broadcast studio to produce pre-and post-game content for fans.

“No other company offers the compact form factor of the Makito X4 encoder, which allows us to simultaneously send streams from four cameras in sync back to our studio in 200 milliseconds,” said David Sullivan, senior broadcast and media engineer, Philadelphia Eagles. “It’s been a total game-changer. We turned it on and immediately saw the benefits. Not only has the Makito X4 made our workflows easier and faster to set up, but it has also made our overall production look better.”

When the team travels to away games, Philadelphia Eagles live stream content to audiences watching on YouTube and Facebook, as well as to the philadelphiaeagles.com website and their mobile app. But when working at remote venues, getting low-latency communications can be difficult. 

On-field, sideline, and end-zone cameras need to be set up, and there are logistics involved in managing frequencies and wiring, often in an unfamiliar stadium. Once the cameras are in place, video signals need to be synchronized and brought back at sub-second latency to their studio in Philadelphia. This used to mean transporting a large amount of broadcast gear as well as employees to operate the equipment, the companies said. 

With a focus on reducing setup time, costs, and logistical complexity, the Philadelphia Eagles turned to Haivision’s compact Makito X4 Encoder to encode four HD video inputs simultaneously at very low latency while keeping the outgoing streams in sync.

By using the Makito X4 encoder, the Eagles have been able to reduce the number of staff needed to travel to away games as everything can be managed remotely, providing significant time and cost efficiencies as well as peace of mind when it comes to reliability and ease of use, Haivision said. 

“We’re pleased to see that the Makito X4 is providing the Eagles’ media team with a stellar solution to streamline its workflows and deliver a wider range of content to fans,” explained Brian Henry, Haivision’s senior vice president, sales. “With its exceptional video quality, low latency SRT streaming, along with the highest available 4K UHD and HD encoding density, we’re extremely proud of the powerful potential that the Makito X4 offers for broadcast and remote production applications.”

 More information about the Makito X4 video encoder is available here.  

PHILADELPHIA—As senior producer for the Philadelphia Eagles, our team is responsible for everything from game footage to features to high-production value content. The Eagles have a great history of storytelling and in 2014, we began looking for cameras that could streamline what we were doing and bring that storytelling to modern cinematic life. Our work is heavily “run-and-gun” and we needed a way to be more efficient.

At the time, it was hard to match footage as we were using different cameras from a variety of brands. Luckily, with our facility being located near NFL Films in New Jersey, we were able to easily stay in the loop about new technology. This is how we discovered ARRI.

OUR ARRI ROSTER

At the time, NFL Films was moving a lot of their infrastructure over to ARRI’s AMIRAs. With our content being aligned with theirs, we knew this camera would work for us as well. We purchased three AMIRAs based on customizable switches on the side, the intuitive menu and the overall look of the ARRI footage. Other cameras tend to be too menu-oriented, which makes them difficult to use during a high-paced game. These features allow us to quickly capture more slow-motion and other stylistic footage. Also, by switching to the same platform as NFL Films, we could use their footage interchangeably with ours, knowing it would match.

My favorite feature often flies under the radar—an interchangeable native lens mount on the AMIRA and ALEXA Mini. We have a large inventory of lenses in PL, B4 and EF mounts that we’ve gathered over the years. The ARRI mount system lets us utilize all of these lenses on any given shoot, with only a minute needed to swap out camera mounts.

As a department responsible for producing multiple forms of content, we need to utilize the cameras in a variety of ways. For example, our game day content is the most prominent and arguably the most important that we produce. We use all of our ARRI cameras on game day in more of a post-production capacity.

Our ALEXA Mini shoots at a high-50 (referring to the 50-yard line) angle, which covers whichever player we have wired for sound. One of our AMIRAs shoots high framerate game action as an alternative to the typical broadcast style. We use our other two AMIRAs on the ground, splitting them up as multipurpose cameras capturing stylistic game action, fan and atmosphere shots.

Outside of game day, our ARRls are our main camera for short stories or features, whether it’s local or on the road, sit-down interviews and shoulder-based handheld work with players. This allows us to use our best cameras in as many situations as possible in order to produce and maintain overall high production value.

MASTER CONTROL AT OUR FINGERS

ARRI Master Grips also help us get the most out of our cameras. These hand grips allow us to assign and control complex camera and lens features with fingertip control. In the field, if we are shoulder-mounted, it gives us so much flexibility in the moment when you’re trying to dial in multiple settings to get the shot. In our world, we do not get a lot of second chances to shoot a moment. Instead of turning the camera on its side and trying to figure out what’s what, you’ve just got it all at your fingertips.

As a content team, we strive to create the best content—simple as that. Viewers sometimes may not notice the cinematic quality we aim for, but they do recognize and appreciate when it has the same look and feel as movies or big brand commercials. The ARRls allow us to achieve that goal, while also helping us operate efficiently day in and day out.

Nick Rotondi is a senior producer with the Philadelphia Eagles. He can be contacted at NRotondi@Eagles.nfl.com.

For additional information, visit www.arri.com.

HACKENSACK, N.J.—NFL training camps are getting ready to kick off, and for the Philadelphia Eagles players and coaches aren’t the only new additions to the franchise. The team’s video production unit has announced that it has invested in a LiveU MultiPoint system to help share and distribute its content.

A cloud-based IP live video distribution system, MultiPoint will be used for Eagle’s content to be distributed to its broadcasting partners, which include NBC10 Philadelphia and other local sports networks. These networks can obtain footage from a single camera the Eagle’s video team uses to cover events such as press conferences, locker room interviews and off-the-field team events.

The LiveU system has initially installed about 10 months ago. Since then, the Eagles and its partnering broadcasters have used the technology for coverage of the NFL Draft and annual league meetings.