The weekend’s only Top 25 matchups pulled solid, but unspectacular numbers on ESPN.
Mississippi State-Georgia scored 2.8 million viewers on ESPN’s College Football Primetime Saturday night, down 32% from LSU-Auburn in an earlier timeslot last year (4.1M) and down 11% from Texas A&M-Arkansas in 2015 (3.1M). Ratings fell 35% (from 2.39 to 1.55).
The Bulldogs’ rout of the Bulldogs, which had 2.9 million viewers with streaming included, was the weekend’s top college football game on cable.
Earlier in the day, TCU-Oklahoma State had a 1.5 rating and 2.5 million viewers — down a tick in ratings but up 3% in viewership from Oklahoma State-Texas two years ago (1.6, 2.4M). There was no comparable window last year. Adding in streaming, it had 2.6 million.
Though technically the game of the weekend, pitting the #6 and #16 teams in the country, TCU’s win ranked third out of ESPN’s four games Saturday. It trailed its lead-in, Texas A&M-Arkansas, which had a 1.6 (-6%) and 2.6 million (-3%).
Rounding out Saturday’s slate, UCLA-Stanford had a 1.0 and 1.7 million — down 57% in ratings and viewership from Arkansas-Texas A&M last year (2.3, 3.9M) and down 29% and 22% respectively from USC-Arizona State in ’15 (1.4, 2.1M).
On ESPN2, Friday’s Virginia-Boise State game topped the week four charts with a 0.8 and 1.3 million. Last year’s comparable game (TCU-SMU) aired on ESPN and had a 0.9 and 1.4 million. ESPNU topped out at 503,000 for Auburn-Missouri Saturday night.
[Wknd. numbers from ESPN, ShowBuzz Daily 9.26, Nielsen]
