The second week of the college football season was much better than the first for Fox Sports.
The Michigan State/Oregon college football game drew a 3.5 final rating and 6.0 million viewers on FOX last Saturday night, up 75% in ratings and 76% in viewership from West Virginia/Oklahoma last year (2.0, 3.4M) and up 25% and 40%, respectively, from Nebraska/UCLA in 2012 (2.8, 4.3M).
Excluding bowls and conference championship games, Oregon’s win ranks as the highest rated and most-watched college football telecast ever on FOX.
Head-to-head, Michigan State/Oregon topped both Michigan/Notre Dame on NBC (4.6M) and Virginia Tech/Ohio State on ESPN (4.3M). With that said, it trailed USC/Stanford on ABC earlier in the day as the top game of the week (6.5M).
Also in primetime Saturday night, BYU/Texas drew 910,000 viewers on Fox Sports 1 — up 189% from UL-Lafayette/Kansas State in an earlier timeslot last year (315K) and the network’s seventh-most watched college football game ever.
Texas Tech/UTEP later in the night drew 447,000, down 46% from Washington State/USC last year (825K) but still the network’s most-watched Conference USA telecast ever. Shifting to afternoon action, Kansas State/Iowa State drew 596,000 viewers — up 72% from Oklahoma State/Texas-San Antonio last year (347K).
So far this season, both FOX and FS1 are trending ahead of last year. On the strength of Michigan State/Oregon, FOX is now averaging a 2.2 rating and 3.7 million viewers — up 10% in ratings and 9% in viewership from last year and up 10% and 20%, respectively, from 2012. FS1 has averaged 568,000 viewers, up 24% from its inaugural season last year (458K).
(Wknd. numbers and season avg. from Fox Sports Media Group)
