Ratings: MACtion, Gold Glove, UCL

Despite airing opposite presidential election coverage, Wednesday’s Ohio-Central Michigan college football game averaged 711,000 viewers on ESPN — the largest “midweek MACtion” audience in five years (2015 Northern Illinois-Toledo: 856K) and the most-watched MAC conference game overall since the 2016 MAC Championship (Western Michigan-Ohio: 1.36M).

CMU’s win, which included a lengthy power delay, was one of six MAC games on the opening night of the conference’s season. In the same telecast window, Buffalo-Northern Illinois averaged 199,000 on ESPN2.

Airing on Election Night itself, the announcement of this year’s Major League Baseball Gold Glove winners averaged 221,000 viewers on ESPN Tuesday night — actually up 105% from last year on ESPN2 (108K), according to Sports Business Daily. Viewership declined 35% from the 2016 Gold Glove announcement, which also took place on the same night as the presidential election (342K).

The awards show was not ESPN’s top program of the night, trailing both a College Football Playoff rankings show (225K) and a re-air of the 30 For 30 “Youngstown Boys” (301K).

Through three matchdays, coverage of the UEFA Champions League has averaged 432,000 viewers across UniMas and Galavision — up 39% from last year. In particular, UniMas is up 35% (to 372K) and Galavision is up 100% (to 60,000).

This year’s competition has already included two of the three most-watched UCL group stage matches on record, with Juventus-Barcelona on October 28 ranking first (757K) and Tuesday’s Real Madrid-Inter Milan match third (561K).