In its CBS debut, the Big Ten Championship scored a slightly larger audience than a year ago.
Saturday’s Oregon-Penn State Big Ten Championship Game averaged a 5.2 rating and 10.50 million viewers on CBS, up a tick in ratings and 5% in viewership from Michigan-Iowa on FOX last year (5.1, 10.02M) and easily the most-watched college football game on the network this season. The previous high was 6.32 million for USC-Michigan.
The Big Ten title game delivered the second-largest audience of championship weekend — trailing only the Georgia-Texas SEC Championship on ABC and ESPN (16.6M) — and easily won a head-to-head with the ACC Championship on ABC (6.0M).
For the season, Oregon-Penn State delivered the fifth-largest (Nielsen-measured) college football audience on any network, behind only the SEC Championship, another Georgia-Texas game on ABC (13.2M), Michigan-Ohio State on FOX (12.3M) and Georgia-Alabama on ABC in September (12.0M).
CBS is in its first full season as a Big Ten broadcaster after having previously served as home of the SEC. As might go without saying, the network fared better with the SEC Championship, averaging 17.5 million last year and topping this year’s Big Ten audience of 10.5 million in 12 of 13 seasons from 2011-23. It should be noted that the SEC title game typically airs in a borderline standalone window, while the Big Ten routinely faces other “power” conference competition.
Prior to this year, every Big Ten Championship had aired on FOX. Under the new Big Ten media rights deal that began last season, FOX will get the game only in odd-numbered years. The game is set to air on NBC in 2026 and again on CBS in 2028.
FOX instead carried a women’s college basketball doubleheader, averaging 560,000 for Tennessee-Iowa and 466,000 for Louisville-UConn.
