A pair of unranked teams playing a week before everyone else — and on the other side of the planet — was not a recipe for ratings success.
Friday’s Hawaii/California college football game from Australia earned a 0.5 final rating and 782,000 viewers on ESPN, trailing all eight of the network’s Friday night games last season (not including ESPN2).
Cal’s comfy win was topped head-to-head by the Packers/49ers NFL preseason game on NFL Network, which had 918,000 viewers. It edged competing coverage of Bellator mixed martial arts on Spike TV, which had 725,000.
Of note, the game was not even the most-watched college football telecast of the weekend. That distinction went to Saturday’s Charleston Southern/North Dakota State FCS Kickoff, which had a 0.5 and 797,000 viewers — actually down 29% in ratings and 20% in viewership from NDSU/Montana last year, which was called by Brent Musburger (0.7, 981K).
(Wknd. numbers via Programming Insider, ShowBuzz Daily)
