For a second-straight year, Ohio State and Texas met in front of an unusually large TV crowd.
Saturday’s Ohio State-Texas college football game averaged 13.99 million viewers on ABC, marking the largest regular season college football audience on the ESPN family of networks since ABC last carried Michigan-Ohio State in 2016 (16.8M).
The Buckeyes’ collapse, which peaked with 16.4 million viewers, ranks as the most-watched Week 2 college football game on record. Last year’s matchup between the same two teams was the most-watched Week 1 game on record with 16.6 million on FOX.
Note that Nielsen did not track out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 or do so in 100% of markets until 2025, that it is only in the second year of a new methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel, and that it has recently introduced a tweak to its measurement that is intended to better account for co-viewing of games.
Viewership increased 45% from Michigan-Oklahoma in the same window last year (9.67M).
The same Oklahoma-Michigan matchup ranked second for the week with 8.22 million in the FOX “Big Noon Saturday” window, up 92% from Iowa-Iowa State last year (4.28M).
Week two was unusually top-heavy, with three games over seven million viewers — including ABC’s Alabama-Kentucky at 7.28 million, up 52% from last year — and no others averaging even 3.1 million.
Missouri-Kansas placed fourth for the week with 3.09 million on FOX Friday night, up sharply from last year’s resumption of the rivalry, which aired on ESPN2 (1.83M). Arizona-BYU rounded out the top five with 3.01 million on FOX Saturday afternoon. ABC had just 2.53 million for Arizona State-Texas A&M, the network’s least-watched SEC home game since acquiring rights.
Over on ESPN, Oklahoma State’s weather-delayed upset of Oregon averaged 2.14 million during the period in which it aired on ESPN. Coverage shifted to ESPN2 — and later ESPNews — to make room for the U.S. Open women’s final, which averaged 2.7 million. The ESPN2 portion averaged 945,000 before being preempted for UCF-Pittsburgh, which averaged 859,000. ESPNews is not Nielsen-rated, so no viewership figure was reported for the conclusion of the game.
ESPN also averaged 1.80 million for Tennessee-Georgia Tech and 1.04 million for Arkansas-Utah. For all the acrimony on social media over ESPN showing tennis, the U.S. Open women’s final was the most-watched event on the network Saturday.
