Rounding out the pre-New Year’s Six slate, the newly renamed San Francisco bowl game slipped on ESPN.
The Stanford/Maryland Foster Farms Bowl drew 3.2 million viewers on ESPN Tuesday night, down 14% from Washington/BYU last year (3.8M) but up 203% from Arizona State/Navy on ESPN2 in 2012 (1.1M). Ratings for the game were not available.
Stanford’s win earned ESPN’s second-smallest audience for the bowl since at least 2006, ahead of only the 2010-11 game between Nevada and Boston College (2.5M). That does not factor in the previously mentioned 2012 game on ESPN2.
Viewership for the bowl has yet to return to the late 2000s highs, when viewership topped six million in consecutive seasons. The game has failed to earn at least four million viewers in the past five years, after having topped that mark in each of the previous three.
(Tue. numbers from ShowBuzz Daily)
