The first week of the college football season dominated the weekly sports ratings charts.
Sunday’s Florida State-LSU game was the most-watched sporting event of the week with 9.17 million viewers on ABC, followed by Saturday’s TCU-Colorado game on FOX that marked the debut of Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders (7.26M). The full list of week one college football ratings can be seen here.
College football games accounted for the 11 largest sports audiences of the week, with NASCAR’s playoff opener from Darlington ranking as the top non-football event with 2.29 million viewers. ABC’s three-hour U.S. Open window on Sunday ranked second among non-football events with 2.05 million.
The weekly list now includes sports studio shows like ESPN’s College Gameday and FOX Big Noon Kickoff, plus the daily programs such as Pardon the Interruption and the morning debate shows. Only events with at least 150,000 viewers are listed.
For ratings from the comparable weekend last year, see this post on ShowBuzz Daily.
Weekly sports ratings
Sunday, September 3
As previously noted, FSU-LSU was the most-watched sporting event of the week and — as goes without saying — topped the Sunday charts.
Saturday, September 2
Deion Sanders’ debut as Colorado coach was easily the most-watched game of Saturday, followed by the Big Ten debuts of CBS and NBC.
Friday, September 1
Louisville-Georgia Tech on ESPN took top honors on Friday, followed by Central Michigan-Michigan State on FS1. No sporting event did as well as the comparable day a year ago, when Serena Williams’ final tennis match topped the four million mark.
Thursday, August 31
On the opening Thursday of the college football season, Nebraska-Minnesota on FOX scored a modest victory over Florida-Utah on ESPN, though the latter did better in all three of the key adult demographics.
Wednesday, August 30
With no college football on schedule, no sporting event last Wednesday cracked the million viewer mark. US Open coverage on ESPN took top honors with just 858,000 viewers.
Tuesday, August 29
Just like Wednesday, there were no seven-figure sports audiences on August 29. The US Open topped the charts with just 735,000.
Monday, August 28
Rounding out the weekly slate, the US Open also topped the August 28 charts with 939,000 viewers.
