Left out of the playoff, Ohio State and Georgia delivered a pair of multi-year highs on New Year’s Day.
Tuesday’s Ohio State-Washington Rose Bowl delivered an 8.9 rating and 16.78 million viewers on ESPN and ESPN2, up 3% in ratings and 7% in viewership from 2017 (USC-Penn State: 8.6, 15.74M) and up 20% and 24% respectively from 2016 (Stanford-Iowa: 7.4, 13.55M). Last year’s Rose Bowl was a College Football Playoff semifinal (Georgia-Oklahoma: 13.7, 26.91M).
Excluding playoff games, this year’s Rose Bowl ranks as the highest rated and most-watched since 2014, the final year of the old Bowl Championship Series (Michigan State-Stanford: 10.2, 18.64M).
It was also the top bowl game of any kind, excluding the playoff, since 2014.
Notably, the Rose Bowl came to within 100,000 viewers of last Saturday’s Clemson-Notre Dame Cotton Bowl, a playoff semifinal (9.4, 16.81M).
Later in the day, Texas-Georgia scored a 7.3 and 13.30 million in the Sugar Bowl — up 30% in ratings and 40% in viewership from 2017 (Oklahoma-Auburn: 5.6, 9.52M) and up 43% and 49% respectively from 2016 (Mississippi-Oklahoma State: 5.1, 8.94M). Last year’s Sugar Bowl was part of the playoff (Alabama-Clemson: 11.4, 21.47M).
The Longhorns’ win was the highest rated and most-watched Sugar Bowl, excluding playoff semifinals, since 2014 (Oklahoma-Alabama: 9.3, 16.34M). It was also the top New Year’s Day nightcap since the 2012 Fiesta Bowl (Oklahoma State-Stanford: 8.4, 13.68M).*
In other New Year’s Day action, the LSU-UCF Fiesta Bowl had a 4.7 and 8.47 million on ESPN — down 18% in ratings and 17% in viewership from last season (Penn State-Washington: 5.7, 10.17M). That game aired in a later timeslot and faced no college football competition.
Ratings and viewership were the lowest for the Fiesta Bowl since the 2014-15 season (Boise State-Arizona: 4.6, 7.41M).
Versus the same timeslot last year, ratings increased a tick and viewership 1% from last year’s Peach Bowl (UCF-Auburn: 4.6, 8.38M).
Rounding out the day’s slate, the Mississippi State-Iowa Outback Bowl had 3.26 million on ESPN2 — down 36% from last year (South Carolina-Michigan: 5.05M) and down 47% from 2017, when the game aired on ABC (6.11M). Figures for the Kentucky-Penn State Citrus Bowl on ABC were not immediately available.
The full list of college football bowl ratings is available here.
* 2012 New Year’s Day bowl games took place on January 2.
[Numbers from ESPN, Nielsen via Programming Insider 1.3]
