The NFL of course dominated the weekly sports ratings charts, but once again the real story was in college football — where a humbling loss for Colorado did little to slow the Buffaloes’ ratings roll.
As is customary, the NFL national window was the top draw of the week with more than 24 million viewers on FOX, followed by Sunday Night Football at just shy of 20 million. CBS ranked third with 17.5 million for its first singleheader of the season. For more NFL ratings, see this page.
The top non-NFL draw was Colorado’s blowout loss to Oregon on Saturday, which delivered the largest Nielsen-measured audience of the college football season with north of ten million viewers. Colorado-Oregon just edged Ohio State’s narrow win over Notre Dame, which finished just shy of ten million in primetime. (NBC streaming viewership is not included in Nielsen’s estimates and is instead measured by Adobe Analytics. Including that audience, Ohio State-Notre Dame came out ahead with 10.6 million.)
For the full list of week four college football ratings, see this page.
The week’s top non-football program was the NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Texas, which averaged two million viewers on USA Network — up from last year and the first race since Richmond in July to post an increase.
Not far behind was Pro Bull Riding on CBS, which averaged a 1.0 and 1.93 million in an NFL-adjacent window on Sunday.
Weekly sports ratings, September 18-24
Only events with at least 150,000 viewers are listed. Household ratings of 0.55 or below are shown to the second decimal point.
Sunday, September 24
As mentioned previously, the NFL national window was the top draw of the week with more than 24 million viewers on FOX — though that was still down from last year, when coverage featured Aaron Rodgers and the Packers vs. Tom Brady and the Buccaneers.
Saturday, September 23
Saturday’s college football slate generated three of the eight largest audiences this season. Beyond Colorado-Oregon and Ohio State-Notre Dame, which rank 1 and 2 for the year, Florida State-Clemson made the top eight with 6.7 million viewers on ABC.
Friday, September 22
College football topped the viewership charts on Friday as the ACC on ESPN (NC State-Virginia: 1.59M) finished comfortably ahead of the Big Ten on FS1 (Wisconsin-Purdue: 0.6, 1.19M).
Thursday, September 21
Amazon’s Thursday Night Football posted its second-largest audience ever last Thursday as 13.92 million tuned in for Giants-49ers. Only Vikings-Eagles the previous week averaged more viewers (15.05M).
Wednesday, September 20
ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” was the most-watched sports program last Wednesday with 678,000 viewers. The top live sportscast was a Bayern Munich-Manchester United UEFA Champions League match on Univision with 440,000 (English-language coverage aired on CBS Sports Network, which is not Nielsen-rated).
Tuesday, September 19
“PTI” also topped the viewership charts last Tuesday with 706,000 viewers. Again, the top live sportscast was a UEFA Champions League match on Univision (Barcelona-Royal Antwerp: 529K).
Monday, September 18
In the first split Monday Night Football doubleheader of the season, Browns-Steelers on ABC (15.43M) more-than-doubled Saints-Panthers on ESPN and ESPN2 (6.95M).
