A trio of top ten matchups helped FOX deliver strong results on college football’s championship weekend.
FOX earned a 5.5 overnight rating for the Penn State/Wisconsin Big Ten Championship Game Saturday night, down 7% from Michigan State/Iowa last year (5.9) but up 49% from Ohio State/Wisconsin in 2014 (3.7). The 5.5 is the third-highest in the short history of the Big Ten title game (dates back to 2011), behind last year and Michigan State/Ohio State in 2013 (8.4).
More broadly, the 5.5 is the third-highest for any college football game on FOX since the network stopped carrying the Bowl Championship Series in 2010.
The Nittany Lions’ comeback win was the second-highest rated college football game of the weekend in the metered markets, trailing only the Alabama/Florida SEC Championship on CBS earlier in the day (7.0). Head-to-head, it trounced Clemson/Virginia Tech in the ACC Championship on ABC (3.6).
The previous night, the Washington/Colorado Pac-12 Championship had a 3.9 overnight on FOX — up 95% from Stanford/USC on ESPN last year (2.0) but down 7% from Oregon/Arizona on FOX in 2014 (4.2). The 3.9 is the second-highest in the short history of the Pac-12 Championship, behind 2014, and ranked third for the weekend among college football games.
Rounding out a solid weekend for FOX, Oklahoma/Oklahoma State had a 3.4 overnight Saturday afternoon — the highest for the annual “Bedlam” rivalry since 2013 on ABC (5.2). Last year’s edition had a 2.6 overnight on ABC’s Saturday Night Football, though that crucially did not include the Oklahoma City market, while the 2014 game had a 0.8 on Fox Sports 1.
(Wknd. numbers via Sports Business Daily 12/5)
