The Peach Bowl delivered one of its largest audiences since moving to ESPN.
Saturday’s Florida-Michigan Peach Bowl scored a 5.0 rating and 8.37 million viewers on ESPN, up 9% in ratings but down a fraction of a percent in viewership from last season (UCF-Auburn: 4.6, 8.38M), and up 35% and 49% respectively from 2015 (Houston-FSU: 3.7, 5.60M). The 2016 Peach Bowl served as a College Football Playoff semifinal.
The Gators’ blowout win delivered the largest audience of the bowl season, outside of Saturday’s playoff games.
It also delivered the fourth-largest Peach Bowl audience since the game moved to ESPN in 1992. That excludes the 2016 semifinal. Last year, 2012 (Clemson-LSU: 8.56M) and 2013 (Texas A&M-Duke: 8.69M) hold the top spots.
The Peach Bowl marked the third bowl game between Florida and Michigan in the past decade. The two previous meetings, both in the Citrus Bowl, had 8.76 million (2016) and 14.78 million (2008). Both of those games aired on ABC New Year’s Day. A regular season matchup last year had 7.65 million, also on ABC.
In other action, Friday’s Washington State-Iowa State Alamo Bowl scored 5.55 million — up 28% from last year (TCU-Stanford: 4.33M), up 22% from two years ago (Oklahoma State-Colorado: 4.55M), and the largest audience for the game since the 2015-16 season (TCU-Oregon: 7.41M).
Earlier in the day, the West Virginia-Syracuse Orlando Bowl had 4.83 million — up 12% from last year (Oklahoma State-Virginia Tech: 4.32M), up 14% from 2016 (Miami-West Virginia: 4.25M), and the largest audience for the game since 2014 (Clemson-Oklahoma: 4.90M).
The day started off on a down note. Auburn’s rout of Purdue in the Music City Bowl had 2.57 million, down 44% from last year (Northwestern-Kentucky: 4.63M) and down 49% from 2016 (Tennessee-Nebraska: 5.0M). It was the least-watched edition of the game since 2012 (Vanderbilt-N.C. State: 1.95M). Not coincidentally, it also had the game’s earliest start time (1:30 PM ET) since 2012 (Noon).
[Numbers from ESPN PR, Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 12.31]
