In a less dominant season for the “SEC on ABC” and FOX “Big Noon Saturday,” other networks are topping the viewership charts more often.
Saturday’s Miami-Notre Dame college football game averaged 9.1 million viewers across a Nielsen-measured linear audience and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics, marking the top audience of the season on NBC, and the largest of week ten on any network. Viewership outpaced Alabama-LSU on ABC earlier in the day, which averaged the top Nielsen-measured audience of the weekend with 8.86 million. (NBC’s position is that its combined Nielsen + Adobe figures are equivalent to the Nielsen-only data for other networks.)
Last season, ABC or FOX delivered the top audience in every week of the season. This year, NBC has topped the charts at least twice and CBS once.
The #1 Hurricanes’ loss, which peaked with 12 million in the 11 PM ET quarter-hour, nearly tripled Notre Dame’s primetime matchup with Navy on the same weekend last year (3.4M). (Because last season started one week earlier in the calendar, that game took place in week eleven.)
Going back further, only two Notre Dame games on NBC have averaged more viewers since 1991 — a 2023 matchup against Ohio State (10.6M) and a 2020 game against Clemson that was interrupted by presidential election coverage (10.4M). (Note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025, that this is only in the second year of a new Nielsen methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel, and that Nielsen has recently tweaked its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games.)
As previously mentioned, ABC placed second for the weekend with 8.86 million for Alabama-LSU — up from last year’s primetime game between the teams (7.50M) and slightly ahead of 2023 (8.82M) as the rivals’ most-watched meeting since a #1 vs. #2 edition in 2019 (16.64M). (Given the aforementioned methodological changes, the 2023 game would almost certainly rank higher all things being equal.)
Alabama’s win, which peaked with 10.2 million, was the most-watched SEC game in nearly a month — since Georgia-Alabama averaged 12.24 million and Texas-Oklahoma 9.82 million in week six. In that time, the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC have each had larger audiences, the latter two against Notre Dame.
Placing third for the week, CBS averaged 5.40 million for Oregon-Ohio State — the network’s second-largest audience of the season behind Ohio State-Iowa in week five (5.97M).
Rounding out the top five, ABC averaged 4.41 million for BYU-Utah at Noon ET — the rivals’ largest audience on record and an increase of 124% over their meeting in week eight last season, which averaged fewer than two million on FOX (1.97M). The top-ten rivalry game actually declined from Vanderbilt-Texas in the same week ten window last year (4.51M).
ABC also averaged 4.24 million for Georgia-Mississippi in primetime, down from Oklahoma-Tennessee in week ten last year (4.81M). In addition to facing Miami-Notre Dame, the game also aired opposite a Kentucky-Tennessee game on ESPN that drew 3.06 million.
