The Sunday night of Labor Day weekend continues to rank as one of the premier college football windows.
Sunday’s USC-LSU college football game averaged 9.2 million viewers, per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — down 4% from LSU-Florida State last year, but still the second-largest audience for the annual Sunday night game since 2016 (Notre Dame-Texas: 10.95M).
Keep in mind the game aired shortly after DIRECTV dropped the Disney-owned channels, including all ABC affiliates on DIRECTV STREAM and Disney-owned ABC affiliates on the traditional DIRECTV satellite service.
The Trojans’ win, which peaked with 11.1 million viewers, delivered ABC’s largest audience of the opening weekend, topping Notre Dame-Texas A&M on Saturday night. (Full weekend results will not be available until Wednesday due to the Labor Day holiday.)
It was also the most-watched game involving USC since the 2017 Cotton Bowl against Ohio State (9.47M) and the Trojans’ most-watched regular season game since their 2012 matchup with Notre Dame (16.1M).
Overall, ABC averaged 8.0 million viewers for its four opening weekend games — trailing only 2016 as its most-watched week one on record. All four of the network’s games featured SEC teams, though only two aired as part of the network’s new “SEC on ABC” package. (The two other games, USC-LSU and Georgia-Clemson, were neutral site games that would have aired on ABC regardless.)
It is worth noting that the SEC should not get all of the credit, as each of the four games featured a prominent program from an opposing conference — USC, Notre Dame, Miami and Clemson.
