Perhaps the biggest testament to Colorado’s drawing power in the Deion Sanders era is that their blowout loss to Oregon eked out a ratings victory over Ohio State’s nailbiter against Notre Dame.
Saturday’s Colorado-Oregon college football game averaged a 5.2 rating and 10.03 million viewers on ABC, marking the largest Nielsen-measured audience of the season. The Buffaloes’ 36-point loss averaged a higher rating and larger Nielsen-measured audience than Ohio State-Notre Dame on NBC later in the day, which averaged a 5.1 and 9.98 million.
Keep in mind that NBC uses a separate measurement service — Adobe Analytics — to calculate its streaming audience. (For the other networks, including ESPN and ABC, streaming viewership is included in Nielsen’s figures.) Including the Adobe-measured streaming audience of 605,000, the Ohio State-Notre Dame game had a larger audience of 10.59 million.
Regardless of the order, Colorado-Oregon and Ohio State-Notre Dame delivered the top two audiences of the season, both topping the previous high set a week earlier by Colorado State-Colorado (9.30M). The Buffaloes have now played in four of the top seven games this season. Last season, their top game — their season-opener against TCU (1.25M) — ranked 162nd.
In just four weeks this season, six games have averaged at least eight million viewers — one shy of last year’s full regular season total.
Top audiences of 2023 college football season thus far
As one would expect, both games delivered viewership highs for their respective networks. Colorado-Oregon was the most-watched regular season game on ABC since Notre Dame-Ohio State on the opening weekend of last season (10.53M) and the network’s most-watched afternoon game since Michigan-Ohio State in 2016 (16.84M). (An earlier version of this post said Oklahoma-Texas in 2018 had more viewers, which is true — but that the Big 12 Championship, not a regular season game.)
Ohio State-Notre Dame delivered NBC’s largest Nielsen-measured college football audience since Clemson-Notre Dame three years ago, which averaged more than ten million despite presidential election competition. Including the Adobe Analytics streaming audience, viewership surpassed the 2020 game and USC-Notre Dame in 2005 (10.07M) as the highest on NBC since the 1993 Florida State-Notre Dame “Game of the Century” (22.02M).
The full list of week four college football ratings is available here.
