The strong start to the college football season continued Saturday.
Georgia-Clemson averaged 8.0 million viewers on ABC’s season-opening edition of Saturday Night Football, per Nielsen fast-nationals — the largest opening weekend college football audience in four years (2017 Alabama-FSU: 12.34M).
Nielsen fast-nationals do not include out-of-home viewing, meaning that viewership will rise even higher when the final nationals are released on Wednesday.
The Bulldogs’ win increased 16% over Oregon-Auburn in the comparable window two years ago (6.88M). Notably, this is a rare apples-to-apples comparison to 2019, the final year before Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing in its final nationals. ABC did not carry any Labor Day weekend games last year.
Already this season, two games have averaged at least six million viewers. Ohio State-Minnesota averaged 6.30 million on FOX Thursday, the largest opening Thursday college football audience on record. Last season, it took until mid-October before any game averaged six million viewers, much less eight million.
Earlier in the day, Alabama’s rout of Miami averaged 5.03 million — up 8% from Alabama-Duke in 2019 (4.64M). As with Georgia-Clemson, figures do not include out-of-home viewing.
ABC’s complete doubleheader, which also included an Oklahoma-Tulane game for which figures were not immediately available, averaged 5.04 million — up 9% from 2019 and the network’s most-watched season-opening tripleheader since 2017.
[Nielsen estimates from ESPN PR/Twitter 9.5]
