Army-Navy Ratings Down, But Strong, on CBS

The Army-Navy Game suffered its first decline in eight years, but still delivered big numbers for CBS.

Last Saturday’s Army-Navy college football game scored a 5.0 rating and 8.05 million viewers on CBS, down 4% in ratings and viewership from last year (5.2, 8.42M) but flat and up 1% respectively from 2016 (5.0, 7.94M).

This year’s game snapped a streak of seven straight increases for Army-Navy. Prior to this year, the game had not declined since 2010.

Despite the dip, ratings and viewership were still historically strong. Army’s win tied the second-highest rating for the game since 1999 (5.1) and delivered the second-largest audience since 1992 (8.4M).

For the season, it tied the seventh-highest college football rating on any network, matching the Big Ten Championship Game on FOX. It also delivered the eighth-largest audience.

Army-Navy has now ranked among the ten highest rated games in four straight seasons.

Just a decade ago, Army-Navy ratings bottomed out at a 2.0. That was the final year the game took place on college football’s conference championship weekend, leading into the SEC Championship Game. Since moving to the week after the conference championship games in 2009, ratings and viewership have never fallen below a 3.3 or 4.9 million.