SEC football led the way on ESPN for a second straight week.
Last Saturday’s Texas A&M/Mississippi State college football game drew a 2.6 final rating and 4.1 million viewers on ESPN, up 73% in ratings and 79% in viewership from Maryland/FSU last year (1.5, 2.3M) and up 53% and 67%, respectively, from Northwestern/Penn State in 2012 (1.7, 2.5M).
Mississippi State’s win ranked as the third-most watched college football game of the week, trailing Mississippi’s upset of Alabama on CBS (3.7, 5.9M) and Nebraska/Michigan State on ABC (2.8, 4.6M). Overall, it was the season’s fourth-most watched game on ESPN, trailing only Tennessee/Georgia the previous week (3.1, 4.7M), Wisconsin/LSU in week one (2.8, 4.7M), and Virginia Tech/Ohio State in week two (2.6, 4.3M).
The primetime LSU/Auburn game drew a 2.1 and 3.7 million, up 62% in ratings and 67% in viewership from LSU/Mississippi State last year (1.3, 2.2M) and down 9% and 7%, respectively, from Georgia/South Carolina in 2012 (2.3, 4.0M).
In other week six action, Utah’s upset of UCLA drew 2.0 million on ESPN late Saturday night, down 21% from Washington/Stanford last year (2.6M) and down 19% from Washington/Oregon in 2012 (2.5M). ESPN2 drew 1.1 million for Miami/Georgia Tech earlier in the evening, down 27% from Arkansas/Florida last year (1.6M) and down 11% from FSU/N.C. State in 2012 (1.3M).
Moving to the weeknight games, ESPN drew 1.6 million viewers for Louisville/Syracuse and 1.2 million for Utah/BYU last Friday night — both up from 913,000 for Nevada/San Diego State last year. The previous night, Oregon’s upset loss to Arizona drew 2.4 million; there was no comparable late game last year.
(Sat. numbers from Bloomberg/Media Life Magazine; weeknight numbers from TV By the Numbers [1], [2])
