The final game of the inaugural College Football Playoff earned one of the largest college football audiences in recent memory.
The Ohio State/Oregon College Football National Championship drew an 18.6 final rating and 34.1 million viewers on the ESPN family of networks, up 26% in ratings and 30% in viewership from last year’s Florida State/Auburn BCS National Championship Game (14.8, 26.2M) and up 23% and 29%, respectively, from the Alabama/Notre Dame BCS title game in 2012 (15.1, 26.4M). ESPN alone drew an 18.2 and 33.4 million.
The Buckeyes’ win ranks as the highest rated and most-watched college football game on any network since the 2006 USC/Texas Rose Bowl on ABC (21.7, 35.6M). USC/Texas was the only game of the BCS era (1999-2014) to earn a higher rating and viewership.
Monday’s game also ranks as easily the highest rated and most-watched program ever on cable. The previous highs were a 15.3 for the 2011 Auburn/Oregon BCS championship and 28.3 million for Ohio State/Alabama in this year’s Sugar Bowl. Including the Oregon/FSU Rose Bowl (14.8, 28.2M), the three-game College Football Playoff accounts for the three largest cable audiences of all-time and three of the four highest ratings.
ESPN now owns the 21 largest audiences in cable TV history, with 20 of those pro and college football games. The network has aired four of the nine most-watched programs this year alone — keep in mind the year is not yet two weeks old — with the network’s inaugural NFL playoff telecast ranking ninth (21.7M).
Compared to other sports, Ohio State/Oregon drew a smaller audience than three of the weekend’s four NFL Divisional Round games — topping only Panthers/Seahawks on FOX Saturday night (31.0M). It had more than ten million fewer viewers than the Cowboys/Packers game the previous day, which had a 1 PM ET start (44.4M).
Outside of the NFL, however, few sporting events can compare. The title game drew a larger audience than every NBA game since Bulls/Jazz Game 6 in 1998 (35.9M), every Major League Baseball game since Yankees/Diamondbacks Game 7 in 2001 (39.1M) and every college basketball championship since Duke/Michigan in 1992 (34.3M). It also topped the most-watched soccer match in U.S. history — last year’s Germany/Argentina final (26.5M) — by nearly eight million viewers.
Overall, the inaugural playoff averaged a 16.0 rating and 29.8 million viewers on ESPN. The three-game average topped every BCS championship except for USC/Texas in 2006 and Alabama/Texas in 2010 (30.8M).
