Featuring a top 25 matchup, the Pop-Tarts Bowl was one of several non-playoff games to hit a viewership high last week.
Last Saturday’s BYU-Georgia Tech Pop-Tarts Bowl averaged 8.7 million viewers on ABC, marking the largest audience for the Orlando-based bowl game since 1991 and the best for any bowl unaffiliated with the College Football Playoff since the Michigan-Alabama Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Day 2020 (14.0M).
It should be noted that the Pop-Tarts Bowl is the game that Notre Dame opted not to play after it was left out of the playoff.
Keep in mind that Nielsen did not begin tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 and did not do so in 100 percent of markets until last February. In addition, Nielsen in September shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” methodology that combines its traditional panel with data from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will generally skew comparisons to last year, much less 5, 10 or 20 years ago.
While viewership was officially the highest in six years for a non-playoff bowl, it is entirely likely that last year’s Alamo Bowl — which drew 8.0 million viewers with a smaller out-of-home sample and no “Big Data” — would rank higher all things being equal.
Nevertheless, viewership was strong even on an apples-to-apples basis. The Pop-Tarts Bowl ranked third for the postseason through last weekend, behind only the Alabama-Oklahoma and Miami-Texas A&M first round College Football Playoff games. It outdrew the two first round games that faced NFL competition, despite facing NFL competition of its own (albeit on NFL Network rather than broadcast television).
Placing fourth was its lead-in, the Penn State-Clemson Pinstripe Bowl. With an audience of 7.6 million, Penn State’s win increased 81% from Boston College-Nebraska last year (4.19M) and drew the largest audience in the 15-year history of the game.
All three games of ABC’s Saturday tripleheader hit highs. In the nightcap, the Virginia-Missouri Gator Bowl drew 6.0 million (+19%) — the largest audience for that game since it previously aired on broadcast television in 2010 (6.4M).
Shifting to ESPN, the Minnesota-New Mexico Cactus Bowl drew its largest audience since 2011 (4.4M, +26%), the California-Hawaii Hawaii Bowl its largest since 2013 (2.7M, +40%), the ECU-Pittsburgh Military Bowl its largest since 2018 (2.5M, +183%), and the UTSA-FIU First Responder Bowl its largest audience yet (3.1M, +82%). As previously noted, the LA Bowl drew the largest audience in its five-year history in the final edition of the event.
* Correction: This post originally referred to last year’s Pop-Tarts Bowl having 8.0 million viewers. It was last year’s Alamo Bowl that had 8.0 million (the Pop-Tarts Bowl had 6.8 million).
