ABC put the wraps on a dominant, SEC-heavy regular season with a milestone Black Friday audience for Texas A&M-Texas.
The ESPN family of networks averaged 2.2 million viewers for college football games this season, including 6.9 million for games on ABC, marking the highest averages since 2011 and 2006, respectively. Those multi-year highs are unchanged even if one excludes the new “Big Data + Panel” methodology that Nielsen rolled out in September, ESPN said Friday.
The most-watched game on the ESPN networks this season was Texas A&M-Texas last Friday night, which averaged a 5.6 rating and 13.04 million on ABC — surpassing the 2010 Iron Bowl on CBS (12.5M) as the largest weekday college football audience on record. The Longhorns’ win, which peaked with 14.3 million viewers, also ranks as the most-watched edition of the Texas A&M-Texas rivalry, which was not played for more than a decade when the two schools were in separate conferences. Last year’s game had a 4.4 and 9.46 million.
Keep in mind that Nielsen did not track out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 and did not do so in 100 percent of markets until earlier this year. In addition, Nielsen in September shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” methodology that builds on its traditional panel by incorporating viewership for smart TVs and set-top boxes. These changes will generally give present-day viewership figures a leg up on past years, particularly any prior to 2020.
For the season, last Friday’s game delivered the third-largest audience on any network behind Ohio State-Michigan the following day (18.42M) and Texas-Ohio State in week one (16.6M). But while FOX took the top two spots this season, ABC swept the rest of the top ten and delivered 26 of the top 30. Nearly all of those included an SEC team, with Notre Dame-Miami on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend marking the network’s only non-SEC game in the top 30 (10.80M).
ABC drew two of its three-largest audiences over the holiday weekend, as Saturday’s Alabama-Auburn Iron Bowl drew a 5.1 and 11.31 million — up sharply from last year’s edition (7.16M) and the largest audience for that rivalry since 2019 on CBS (11.43M). The first primetime Iron Bowl since 2014 concluded a “Saturday Night Football” season that averaged 8.0 million viewers, the highest average of any college football telecast window and up 8% year-over-year.
The two most-watched telecast windows belonged to ABC, as the network’s mid-afternoon SEC games averaged 7.8 million (+31%). That window concluded on a below-average note with LSU-Oklahoma averaging a 3.0 and 6.38 million last weekend, but that game faced rare intra-conference competition from Vanderbilt-Tennessee on ESPN (1.7, 4.01M).
The only competitive window ABC did not win was Noon ET, as FOX took top honors with 6.26 million for its “Big Noon Saturday” slate (+11%). Facing Ohio State-Michigan, ABC aired a rare non-SEC matchup last weekend, drawing 2.22 million for Miami-Pittsburgh. Not counting “week zero,” that was the second-smallest ABC audience all season, topping only Arkansas-Memphis in September (2.11M).
ABC carried only five games all season that did not involve an SEC team, with three of those — Miami-Pittsburgh, Notre Dame-Pittsburgh on November 15 (3.96M) and BYU-Texas Tech on November 8 (3.98M) — ranking among the network’s seven least-watched games. Even Miami-Florida State on October 4, which at that point in the season qualified as a marquee matchup, finished below the network’s regular season average with 6.03 million.
Returning to SEC action, ABC averaged a 3.8 and 8.72 million for Georgia-Georgia Tech on Black Friday, despite airing opposite the Bears-Eagles NFL game on Amazon Prime Video (6.2, 16.33M). That is the largest audience for that rivalry game on record, though it is almost certain that last year’s edition — which had 8.47 million with less out-of-home viewing and no “Big Data” — would rank higher all things being equal.
The Mississippi-Mississippi State “Egg Bowl” led-in with a 2.5 and 5.23 million, the largest audience for that rivalry in more than a decade.
Overall, SEC-controlled contests averaged 5.0 million across ESPN/ABC, which ESPN said Friday is a record and up 11 percent from last year.
