The good news: ratings for Saturday’s Purdue/Notre Dame game were up nearly 70% from last year. The bad news: the game drew the second-lowest rating for a Notre Dame home opener in over a decade.
NBC drew a 2.2 final rating and 3.289 million viewers for Saturday’s Purdue/Notre Dame game, up 69% in ratings and 74% in viewership from Nevada/Notre Dame last year (1.3, 1.886 mil), but down 4% and 1%, respectively, from San Diego State/Notre Dame in ’08 (2.3, 3.319 mil) and down 8% and 3%, respectively, from Georgia Tech/Notre Dame in ’07 (2.4, 3.389 mil).
This marks the second-lowest rated Notre Dame home opener since at least 1998 (final ratings prior to ’99 were not available) and the second-least viewed since at least 2001 (viewership prior to ’02 was not available).
Additionally, this is the fourth straight year that the Notre Dame home opener has drawn less than a 2.5 rating. To put that in perspective, the home opener drew at least a 3.0 in each of the previous four years.
Saturday’s game drew fewer viewers than both college football games on ABC and two of the three Saturday games on ESPN.
