A bleak college football season ended on a record-low note in the ratings with the least-watched national championship of the BCS era.
Monday’s Alabama-Ohio State College Football Playoff National Championship averaged a Nielsen-estimated a 10.3 rating and 18.65 million viewers across the ESPN family of networks, easily the lowest rated and least-watched national title game in the history of the CFP or its predecessor, the Bowl Championship Series. The previous lows were a 13.7 was 21.42 million for the 2005 USC-Oklahoma Orange Bowl. Ratings were not immediately available.
Alabama’s easy win declined 28% in ratings and 27% in viewership from LSU-Clemson last year (14.3, 25.59M) and 25% and 26% respectively from Clemson-Alabama in 2019 (13.8, 25.28M). Viewership was less than half of the 34.15 million who watched the last time Ohio State played in the title game six years ago, albeit in year one of the playoff.
The 27% decline in viewership is comparable to the 30% drop for last year’s World Series, though it is still modest compared to the declines for last year’s NBA Finals (-49%), final round of the Masters (-58%) and Stanley Cup Final (-61%).
For the first time in CFP/BCS history, the National Championship did not generate the largest audience of the college football season. Monday’s game averaged fewer viewers than both of the New Year’s Day semifinals, the Sugar Bowl (Ohio State-Clemson: 19.15M) and Rose Bowl (Alabama-Notre Dame: 18.89M). By contrast to the 27% drop for the title game, the semifinals were off only 2%.
The full three-game College Football Playoff averaged 19.06 million viewers, down 13% from last year.
Despite the low numbers, the three CFP games rank as easily the most-watched non-NFL sporting events since the wave of cancellations and postponements last year. No other sports program has exceeded the 12.7 million viewers drawn by Game 6 of the World Series.
The National Championship was the seventh nationally televised football game in just 72 hours, following a record six NFL Wild Card games over the weekend. It averaged fewer viewers than all six of those NFL games, the least-watched of which was Colts-Bills on Saturday afternoon (20.08M).
Far better numbers could have been expected given the matchup of Alabama and Ohio State, arguably the two highest-profile college football programs.
College football national championship ratings, viewership, since formation of BCS
[Nielsen estimates from ESPN]
