One year after hitting a viewership high, the Holiday Bowl fell back to earth.
Wednesday’s Wisconsin/USC Holiday Bowl drew 4.2 million viewers on ESPN, down 38% from USC/Nebraska last year (6.8M) and up 21% from Texas Tech/Arizona State in 2013 (3.5M). Ratings were not immediately available.
Last year’s Holiday Bowl was the most-watched in the past decade. This year’s game, by contrast, earned the third-smallest audience over the same span — ahead of 2013 and Baylor/UCLA in 2012 (2.9M). Viewership has now fallen below 4.5 million in four of the past five seasons, not bad by cable bowl standards, but below par for a game that approached or exceeded six million from 2007-10.
In a bowl season marked by declining viewership, Wednesday’s 38% drop was not even the biggest of the day. Both the Belk Bowl (-45%) and Birmingham Bowl (-46%) had sharper declines. Of the 23 bowl games on ESPN through Wednesday, the Holiday Bowl was the sixth to decline by more than a third.
(Wed. numbers via ShowBuzz Daily)
