A low-scoring Cotton Bowl hit high marks in the Nielsen ratings.
Friday’s Missouri-Ohio State Cotton Bowl averaged 9.6 million viewers on ESPN, per Nielsen fast-nationals — the game’s largest audience in a decade, excluding years when it served as a College Football Playoff semifinal. The previous high was 9.47 million for Ohio State-USC in 2017. (Keep in mind Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its national estimates until 2020.)
The Tigers’ win, which peaked with 10.7 million viewers, ranks among the ten most-watched Cotton Bowl games in the past 30 years (seventh excluding playoff games, ninth overall).
Viewership increased 11% from last year’s Tennessee-Clemson Orange Bowl in the same Friday night window (8.59M) and more-than-doubled last year’s Cotton Bowl, which aired on a Monday afternoon leading into the Rose Bowl (Tulane-USC: 4.17M).
As goes without saying, the Cotton Bowl delivered the largest audience of the bowl season thus far. For the season, it ranks seventh among all college football games, with Ohio State having played in four of those seven.
This year marks the final time for the foreseeable future that there will be non-playoff New Year’s Six bowls. Under the 12-team playoff format that begins next season, each of the New Year’s Six bowls will host either a quarterfinal or semifinal game. The Cotton Bowl hosts a semifinal next season and a quarterfinal the season after.
(Nielsen estimates from ESPN PR)
