A rough stretch for the college football bowl season continued Thursday, with one notable exception.
The Virginia Tech/Arkansas Belk Bowl scored 5.0 million viewers on ESPN Thursday evening, up 42% from Mississippi State/N.C. State last year (3.5M) but down 23% from Georgia/Louisville in 2014 (6.4M). Ratings were not immediately available.
The Hokies’ win delivered the largest audience of the bowl season on any network and the second-largest audience for the Belk Bowl since 2009.
Thursday’s other games did not perform as well. The Oklahoma State/Colorado Alamo Bowl scored 4.6 million, down 39% from last year’s triple-overtime TCU/Oregon game (7.4M), down 19% from UCLA/Kansas State in 2014 (5.6M) and the smallest audience for the game in nine years — since Penn State/Texas A&M in 2007 (3.8M).
The Cowboys’ rout, the biggest in the Alamo Bowl since 2000, still delivered the second-largest audience of the bowl season behind the Belk Bowl.
Finally, USF/South Carolina scored 2.3 million viewers in the Birmingham Bowl — down 4% from Auburn/Memphis last year (2.4M) and down 49% from Florida/ECU in January 2015, which led into an NFL Wild Card Game (4.5M). It was the least-watched edition of the bowl since 2012 (2.0M) and the second-least watched since 2007.
Dating back to Christmas Eve, 12 of the past 15 bowl games have hit multi-year viewership lows. The Belk, Russell Athletic and Quick Lane bowls are the lone exceptions.
(Thu. numbers via ShowBuzz Daily 12/30)
