As one would reasonably expect, Georgia’s 65-7 obliteration of TCU was the least-watched college football national championship on record.
Monday’s Georgia-TCU College Football Playoff National Championship averaged an 8.7 rating and 17.22 million viewers across the ESPN family of networks, making it the least-watched college football title game in the history of the College Football Playoff and its predecessor the Bowl Championship Series.
The Bulldogs’ 58-point beatdown — the largest margin of victory in any bowl game — declined 28% in ratings and 24% in viewership from Georgia-Alabama last year (12.1, 22.56M). Per Sports TV Ratings, viewership for the game peaked at 22.37 million from 8:30-8:45 PM ET, dropped below 20 million at 9:15 and dwindled to just 10.3 million in the final quarter-hour (10:45-11 PM).
The four least-watched title games in the BCS/CFP era were decided by at least three touchdowns — Monday’s wipeout, Alabama’s four-touchdown rout of Ohio State two years ago, USC’s 34-point blowout of Oklahoma in 2005 and Miami’s modest-by-comparison 23-point win over Nebraska in 2002 (Miami led at one point 34-0). By comparison, only one of the ten most-watched title games was decided by such a margin, Ohio State’s 22-point win over Oregon in the debut of the playoff eight years ago. For the full list of BCS and CFP ratings, see the following page.
For the second time in three years, the CFP National Championship was not the most-watched game of the season. It trailed both the Georgia-Ohio State (9.8, 22.45M) and TCU-Michigan (10.0, 21.70M) semifinals and barely outdrew Michigan-Ohio State in the regular season (17.14M).
In the key young demographics, Georgia-TCU delivered a 4.85 rating in adults 18-49 — down 23% from last year’s 6.3 — as well as a 3.7 in 18-34 and a 5.7 in 25-54.
The gains for the semifinals canceled out Monday’s sharp decline, helping the full, three-game CFP to a 9% increase over last year (from 18.9M to 20.6M).
Beyond the playoff games and New Year’s Six, the remaining bowl games averaged 2.42 million across the ESPN networks — down from 2.65 million last year.
(Nielsen estimates from ESPN PR, Programming Insider 1.10, Sports TV Ratings/Twitter 1.10)
