Opening night of the college football season delivered record numbers on ESPN.
Thursday’s Ohio State-Indiana college football game scored a 3.0 rating and 5.1 million viewers on ESPN, up 150% in ratings and 164% in viewership from South Carolina-Vanderbilt last year (1.2, 1.9M) and up 76% and 96% respectively from TCU-Minnesota in 2015 (1.7, 2.6M).
The Buckeyes’ win delivered ESPN’s largest audience ever on the opening Thursday of the college football season, topping the previous high of 4.2 million for Arizona-Georgia Tech in 1994. Ohio State already owns ESPN’s largest opening weekend audience overall, 10.6 million for their Labor Day game against Virginia Tech two years ago.
Excluding Labor Day and Black Friday, it was the most-watched weeknight regular season game since Oregon-Stanford on ESPN in 2013 (5.7M).
The full Megacast presentation, which included a “Homer” broadcast on ESPNU and streaming coverage on WatchESPN, delivered 5.4 million viewers. That figure does not include TV coverage of the “Coaches Film Room” on ESPNEWS, which is not Nielsen rated.
For the night, Ohio State-Indiana was television’s top program in adults 18-49 (1.9) and adults 18-34 (1.6).
[Thu. numbers from ESPN PR, Programming Insider 9.1]
