Monday night’s game between the Commanders and the 49ers started off like a blast. The road team eventually turned a 23-3 deficit into a 23-17 nail biter.
The final result, for evaluation purposes, resulted in 17.9 million viewers on the various Disney-controlled networks: ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, NFL Network and ESPN Deportes.
The release from ESPN does not include any information about the audience for the debut of Pat McAfee’s alt-cast or the future General Stats broadcast on the NFL Network. (Last week, ESPN revealed that 1.1 million watched the ESPN2 ManningCast and NFL Network Net Gen Stats presentation, without specifying the audience for either network.)
Andrew Marchand i Athletics reports that McAfee’s alt cast attracted a only 351,000 viewerswhich equates to 1.96 percent of the total audience. This is much less than ManningCast draws, even though Peyton and Eli’s performance continues to decline.
Which brings us back to the main question about all of them alt casts: Why? With the exception of streams that aim to get kids to watch by turning the game into a collection of cartoon or video game characters, there’s no reason to take viewers away from the main stream.
People watching adult alt streams will watch the primary stream, in the absence of the alt stream. Ultimately it is a pointless exercise that only wastes time and money.
