After getting its best-case matchup last year, the Big 12 Championship was unsurprisingly less of a draw in the ratings.
Last Saturday’s Oklahoma-Baylor Big 12 Championship averaged a 5.5 rating and 8.70 million viewers on ABC, down 11% in ratings and 14% in viewership from Oklahoma-Texas last year (6.2, 10.16M), but up 45% and 48% respectively from Oklahoma-TCU on FOX in 2017 (3.8, 5.90M).
Excluding regional windows, the Sooners’ overtime win ranks as the second-most watched Big 12 intra-conference game since 2010 (Oklahoma-Nebraska: 8.98M). Last year’s title game holds the top spot.
It also ranks as the seventh-highest rated and eighth-most watched game of the college football season, and the top game to air on ESPN/ABC. This is the second straight year that the Big 12 title game has been ESPN/ABC’s highest rated and most-watched of the season (not including bowls).
Notably, three of the top four games on ESPN/ABC this season involved at least one Big 12 team. LSU-Texas in week two ranks second (5.0, 8.65M) and the season’s previous Oklahoma-Baylor game fourth (3.9, 6.79M).
Overall, three of the top ten games this season involved at least one Big 12 team — fewer than the SEC (five), but the same as the Big Ten.
Big 12 Championship ratings/viewership, past ten editions
[Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 12.10]
