A down year for the SEC on CBS ended on a high note.
Last Saturday’s Alabama/Florida SEC Championship Game drew a 7.8 final rating and 12.8 million viewers on CBS, flat in ratings and viewership compared to Alabama/Missouri last year but down 9% and 11%, respectively, from Auburn/Missouri in 2013 (8.6, 14.4M).
The Crimson Tide’s win ranks as the highest rated and most-watched college football telecast of the season on any network, topping the previous highs of 6.6 for Michigan State/Ohio State in week twelve and 11.1 million for LSU/Alabama in week ten. Four of the eight most-watched college football games this season involved an SEC team, a mark exceeded only by the Big Ten (five).
For the week, the game easily topped the Michigan State/Iowa Big Ten Championship on FOX, a playoff play-in game that went down to the wire (5.7, 9.9M). Keep in mind MSU/Iowa aired opposite the ACC and Pac-12 championship games, which combined for 10.5 million viewers on ABC and ESPN, respectively. Alabama/Florida faced only West Virginia/Kansas State on Fox Sports 1, which had 620,000.
Saturday marked just the fourth time in 14 weeks this season that the SEC on CBS has topped the charts, compared to nine such occurrences in 13 weeks last year. For the season, CBS averaged a 3.4 rating for SEC coverage — down 15% from last year (4.0), down 24% from 2013 (4.5) and tied with 2008 as the series’ lowest average in at least ten seasons.
(Sat. numbers/season avg. from CBS Sports)
