Conference realignment continues to pay dividends for college football broadcasters, this time by way of a top-three matchup of Big Ten foes Ohio State and Oregon.
Saturday’s Ohio State-Oregon college football game averaged a combined 10.2 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — trailing only Georgia-Alabama on ABC two weeks earlier (11.99M per Nielsen) as the most-watched game of the college football season. A Nielsen-only figure was not immediately available.
Viewership was in range of NBC’s similarly-hyped Ohio State-Notre Dame primetime game last season, which averaged a combined audience of 10.6 million.
The combined audience — which peaked at 13.4 million in the 10:45 PM ET quarter-hour — is the largest for a primetime Big Ten regular season game since Penn State-Ohio State in 2008 (10.4M). Keep in mind the standard caveats regarding out-of-home viewing (which was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020) and the combined Nielsen-Adobe figures (most other figures will be Nielsen-only).
Ohio State-Oregon was just the latest newly-created matchup borne of the recent wave of college realignment. Of the five most-watched intra-conference games this season, three are due to realignment — Saturday’s game, USC-Michigan on CBS September 21 (6.32M) and Tennessee-Oklahoma on ABC that same day (6.27M). The two exceptions are the Georgia-Alabama game and Georgia’s narrow win over Kentucky on ABC September 14 (6.60M).
The last time Ohio State played Oregon — a non-conference matchup three years ago — the game drew shy of eight million in the FOX “Big Noon Saturday” window. The teams’ previous meeting was in the 2015 national championship, which of course was a much bigger draw with more than 30 million.
Columbus, Ohio, led all markets Saturday night with a 27.0 rating and 64 share, followed by Cleveland at a 20.1/52. There was no competition from Saturday’s Tigers-Guardians MLB Postseason game, which was moved up from 8 PM ET to 1 PM to avoid weather. Portland placed third with a 12.4/48, and Cincinnati fourth with a 10.1/30. Detroit was the top market outside of Ohio or Oregon with a 9.3/29, followed by Indianapolis at a 7.6/25. Austin, Texas, was the top market outside of a Big Ten state with a 5.8/22.
