Moving Miami-Florida to “week zero” paid off in the ratings for ESPN.
Saturday’s Miami-Florida college football game averaged a 3.4 rating and 5.97 million viewers on ESPN, per Nielsen fast-nationals, marking the network’s largest season-opening audience on record. The previous high was 5.43 million for an Ohio State-Indiana “Megacast” on ESPN and ESPN2 in 2017.
The Gators’ win, which peaked with 7.4 million viewers, also delivered the largest regular season college football audience on ESPN since Alabama-Mississippi State in November 2017 (7.03M).
Viewership increased 958% from the same window last year (North Carolina A&T-Jacksonville State: 564K) and 243% from ESPN’s first FBS game last year, Northwestern-Purdue on a Thursday night (1.74M). Compared to the previous Miami-Florida game in 2013, which aired in a Noon ET Saturday window on ESPN, viewership increased 30% from 4.60 million.
The game was the most-watched between Florida rivals Miami, Florida or Florida State in nearly three years — since Florida-FSU on ABC in November 2016 (6.44M).
Birmingham, Ala., was the top market for the all-Florida matchup with an 18.7 rating. Florida markets Jacksonville (17.0), West Palm Beach (11.7), Tampa-St. Petersburg (11.6) and Ft. Myers (11.2) rounded out the top five. Miami was seventh at a 10.0.
In the overnights, Saturday’s game ranked second among weekend sporting events behind Sunday’s Steelers-Titans NFL preseason game (4.2 to 4.1).
[Nielsen estimates via ESPN PR 8.25; ESPN PR/Twitter 8.26; ShowBuzz Daily 8.27]
