College football Nielsen viewership for the 2024 season, sourced from the networks and industry websites such as Programming Insider or Sports Business Journal.
2024 college football TV ratings
Postseason Week 3
Ohio State’s rout of Oregon in the Rose Bowl topped the New Year’s Day college football slate, scoring more than 21 million viewers. That was down from last year, when Michigan’s win over Georgia went to double-overtime, but last year’s game was also a College Football Playoff semifinal — as opposed to a quarterfinal this time around.
Postseason Week 2
The BYU-Colorado Alamo Bowl was comfortably the most-watched bowl game in week two of the postseason, scoring a record audience of 8.0 million viewers on ABC. It was one of several bowl games to hit highs in the days after Christmas.
(Figures from ESPN PR, Programming Insider 12.30, 1.1)
Postseason Week 1
Tennessee-Ohio State topped the opening round of the College Football Playoff with 14.7 million viewers on the ESPN networks (up from 14.3 million in the fast-nationals), followed by Indiana-Notre Dame at 13.39 million.
Most-watched games of 2024 regular season
Georgia’s two wins over Texas were the two most-watched games of the college football regular season, with the annual Michigan-Ohio State rivalry game placing third.
UPDATE 12/18: Chart now includes the Army-Navy Game, which averaged its top audience since at least 1990 with 9.4 million viewers.
Conference championship weekend
The SEC Championship dominated conference championship weekend as usual, though Georgia’s overtime win over Texas could not quite match last year. The Big Ten Championship posted a slight increase in its CBS debut. Finally, playoff-bound Boise State gave a lift to the Mountain West title game.
Week 14
Michigan-Ohio State topped the Thanksgiving weekend charts, albeit with its smallest audience in seven years. Meanwhile, the Texas-Texas A&M and Georgia-Georgia Tech rivalries hit new highs on ABC.
(Figures from network PR, Programming Insider 12.5 a, b)
Week 13
On a rare weekend not dominated by the SEC, FOX got a rare victory in its “Big Noon” window — just its sixth in 13 weeks this season — thanks to Ohio State’s win over Indiana.
(Figures from network PR, Programming Insider 11.25, 11.26, Jon Wilner 11.26)
Week 12
The “SEC on ABC” swept a second-straight college football Saturday, marking the sixth time in 12 weeks that it delivered the top game in each of the three major competitive windows.
(Figures from ESPN PR, Programming Insider 11.19, 11.18, Sports Business Journal 11.26)
Week 11
The “SEC on ABC” dominated another college football Saturday, sweeping each of the major timeslots.
(Figures from ESPN PR, Programming Insider 11.11, 11.12, Sports Business Journal 11.13)
Week 10
(Figures from ESPN PR, Programming Insider 11.4, 11.6, Sports Business Journal 11.6)
Week 9
Nebraska-Ohio State helped FOX top the college football charts for just the second time this season.
Week 8
Georgia-Texas topped week eight of the college football season with a season-high audience of more than 13 million viewers on ABC.
Week 7
Ohio State-Oregon dominated week seven of the college football season with an audience of 10.4 million viewers on NBC (9.6 million per Nielsen), the second-largest of the season. The Texas-Oklahoma Red River Rivalry placed second with one of its largest audiences in recent years.
Week 6
The SEC delivered the top two and three of the top five college football audiences in week six of the season, and that is without any Nielsen figures being reported for Vanderbilt’s upset of then-#1 Alabama on SEC Network.
Week 5
Alabama’s thrilling win over Georgia topped the week five college football slate with the largest regular season audience on ABC since 2017. (CBS figures are being withheld as the network’s contract with Nielsen has expired.)
Week 4
A pair of matchups created by realignment topped week four of the college football season, with USC-Michigan and Tennessee-Oklahoma both topping the six million mark.
(Data from network PR, Programming Insider 9.24)
Week 3
Georgia’s narrow win over Kentucky topped the week three college football charts with over six million viewers on ABC.
(Data from network PR, Programming Insider 9.17)
Week 2
Texas-Michigan topped week two of the college football season with more than nine million viewers on FOX (9.16 million per Nielsen, 9.35 million including Adobe Analytics) — the largest audience of the young season. Colorado-Nebraska ranked a distant second with more than five million on NBC (over six million including Adobe).
(Data from network PR, Programming Insider 9.9, 9.10)
Weeks 0-1
ESPN/ABC aired the seven most-watched games through the first week of the season, led by USC-LSU on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. (* Figures for truTV will be added when disclosed.)
(Data from network PR, Programming Insider 8.30, 9.3, 9.5, Sports Business Journal 9.5)
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