If there was any remaining doubt about the impact Deion Sanders has had on the Colorado Buffaloes’ popularity, a late night game on cable against Colorado State topped nine million viewers.
Saturday’s Colorado State-Colorado college football game averaged a 4.9 rating and 9.30 million viewers on ESPN, marking the largest late night college football audience on record and the fifth-largest regular season audience ever on the ESPN family of networks.
The Buffaloes’ double-overtime win, which peaked with 11.1 million viewers from 11-11:15 PM ET, also delivered the largest college football audience of the season. The previous high was 9.17 million for FSU-LSU on ABC on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. The full list of college football ratings this season can be seen here.
Colorado has now played in three of the five most-watched games this season, with their week two matchup against Nebraska ranking fourth (8.73M) and their season opener against TCU placing fifth (7.26M). The only non-Colorado games in the top five are the aforementioned FSU-LSU in week one and Texas-Alabama on ESPN in week two (8.76M).
The most-watched Colorado game last season was their opener against TCU, a Friday night game that averaged 1.25 million on ESPN. The last time Colorado and Colorado State played on Nielsen-rated television, a Friday night game in week one of the 2019 season, their matchup averaged 1.28 million on ESPN.
Compared to Miami-Texas A&M in a similar window last year, ratings increased 157% and viewership 174% from a 1.9 and 3.40 million.
Other than last year’s Winter Olympics Super Bowl lead-out (21.28M), no late night sporting event has averaged a larger audience since 2019 — when Broncos-Raiders averaged 10.6 million in the back half of a Week 1 NFL Monday Night Football doubleheader.
By comparison, the top late night NBA playoff game on record was this year’s Warriors-Lakers Game 6 on ESPN, which averaged 8.64 million viewers. The top late night Major League Baseball playoff game — a weather-delayed Padres-Braves NLCS Game 1 in 1998 — averaged 8.33 million on FOX.
Largest college football audiences ever on ESPN
Excluding bowls and conference championship games
(Nielsen estimates from ESPN)
