Both the Heisman Trophy Presentation and Army-Navy Game hit new viewership lows, not counting the anomalous circumstances of two years ago.
Saturday’s Heisman Trophy Presentation averaged 1.65 million viewers on ESPN, down double-digits from last year (~1.85M) marking the smallest audience on record for the traditional December ceremony. Only the delayed, virtual edition in January of last year averaged a smaller audience (1.5M, pending revision).
Viewership for the Heisman presentation has cratered over the past decade, falling two-thirds from 4.9 million in 2012. Once a crown jewel of the ESPN schedule, the event averaged at least 4.0 million viewers in all-but-one year from 2007-13, topping out at a record 6.0 million in 2009. Even the historically low figures of the mid-to-late 2010s — when viewership ranged from 2.2 to 2.9 million — look strong compared to the current levels.
Earlier Saturday, the Army-Navy Game averaged a 3.8 and 6.94 million on CBS — the game’s smallest audience in its now-traditional standalone window since 2014 (6.3M). Ratings and viewership were lower two years ago (2.8, ~4.9M), but the game faced a full slate of college football competition due to the altered schedule that season. This year’s figure also comes with a caveat as the game overlapped with the France-England FIFA World Cup quarterfinal on FOX and Telemundo.
Army-Navy placed 14th for the season among college football telecasts and averaged a larger audience than the SEC on CBS did this season (6.26M), with the obvious caveat that those SEC games faced the usual slate of competing windows on other networks.
In other college football action, Holy Cross-South Dakota State led the FCS quarterfinals with a 0.9 and 1.53 million on ESPN — down from Eastern Tennessee State-North Dakota in a post-College Gameday window last year (1.1, ~1.8M) — followed by Friday’s ESPN2 doubleheader of Samford-North Dakota State (0.43, 671K) and William & Mary-Montana State (0.30, 491K).
The full list of college football ratings this season is available on the following page.
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 12.13)
