Less than a week after it delivered its largest audience in 13 years in its ABC debut, the Heisman Trophy Presentation is officially staying put with ESPN.
ESPN announced Friday that it has reached a multi-year extension with the Heisman Trophy Trust to continue carrying the Heisman Trophy Presentation and related programming. Though the exact length of the extension was not specified in the announcement, ESPN said the partnership would extend beyond its 35 year anniversary — which is in 2029 — and John Ourand of Puck reported Thursday that it is “at least” a six-year deal.
ESPN senior director of programming Kurt Dargis told Ourand that the Heisman is “a vitally important partnership” that “falls in the natural cadence of our season.” It is not clear whether there were any other interested parties.
Nothing in the announcement indicated whether the Heisman will continue to air on ABC, which carried the event this year for the first time. With an audience of 4.3 million, Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza’s win was the most-watched Heisman presentation since 2012 — outpacing most prior years by enough that Nielsen’s methodological changes are unlikely to have been a factor.
Prior to this year, the Heisman had aired on the ESPN flagship network for 31-straight years. It previously aired on broadcast television in 1993 on NBC.
Until recently, the Heisman audience had fallen off noticeably. In the span of a decade, viewership fell from 4.9 million for the aforementioned 2012 edition to just 1.65 million in 2022 — the lowest for a traditional Heisman ceremony. (The audience actually bottomed out for the COVID-impacted 2020 edition, but that was a delayed, virtual ceremony that aired in January 2021.)
Viewership has now increased for three-straight years — the longest streak this century — hitting multi-year highs each time.
The Heisman Trophy Presentation once anchored one of the marquee nights on the ESPN calendar, with the telecast typically used as a springboard for a high-profile movie or documentary premiere. As viewership declined in recent years, ESPN did away with the high-profile lead-outs and began carrying more traditional live sportscasts in the post-Heisman window. This year, ESPN aired a full night of college basketball with the Heisman on ABC.
