On one of the most eventful Saturdays in recent television history, a double-overtime thriller between Clemson and Notre Dame more than held its own in the ratings.
Saturday’s Clemson-Notre Dame college football game averaged a 5.4 rating and 10.067 million viewers on NBC, marking the network’s highest rated and most-watched Notre Dame game since 2005 against USC (6.7, 10.072M). Including streaming viewership, the audience of 10.17 million was NBC’s best for a Notre Dame game since the team’s #1 vs. #2 1993 matchup against Florida State (22.02M).
Excluding bowls, Notre Dame’s win was the team’s most-watched game on any network since their 2016 opener against Texas on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend (10.95M).
With the result of the presidential election projected just hours earlier, the game was preempted for a half-hour by a victory speech from projected president-elect Joe Biden. Coverage moved to USA Network during the speech before returning to NBC. Figures are for the NBC portion of the game only (7:35-8:27 and 8:57-11:47 PM ET).
The USA Network portion of the game averaged 2.16 million viewers, while NBC News coverage of the speech averaged 4.77 million.
In the fast-nationals, Saturday’s game peaked with 14.2 million from 11:30-11:45 PM ET. Notably, that is when NBC’s Saturday Night Live was supposed to begin. It would seem likely, given the attention the show generates during election years, that some of those viewers were tuning in expecting SNL.
While the game averaged more viewers than SNL (9.06M), the delayed episode actually had higher ratings in adults 18-49 (2.6 to 2.5) and 25-54 (3.3 to 2.9). The game came out ahead in 18-34 (1.8 to 1.5).
Clemson-Notre Dame ranks as the highest and most-watched game of the season, topping the previous marks of 5.3 and 9.67 million for Georgia-Alabama on CBS last month.
It also ranks as the second-most watched (non-NFL) sporting event since the wave of cancellations and postponements in March, behind Game 6 of the World Series (Rays-Dodgers: 12.70M).
The last time Clemson played Notre Dame was in the 2018 Cotton Bowl (a College Football Playoff semifinal), which averaged a 9.4 and 16.81 million. Their last regular season meeting was five years ago on ABC, a game that averaged a 4.5 and 7.7 million.
[Nielsen estimates from NBC Sports PR, ShowBuzz Daily 11.10 a, b]
