The college football season got off to an impressive start on FOX.
Thursday’s Ohio State-Minnesota college football game averaged 6.30 million viewers on FOX, marking the largest audience on record for a game on the opening Thursday of the season. The previous high was 5.13 million for Ohio State-Indiana on ESPN four years ago.
The Buckeyes’ win, which peaked with 7.04 million viewers from 9:15-9:30 PM ET, delivered the tenth-largest regular season college football audience ever on FOX (excludes bowl and conference championship games). Ohio State has played in ten of the network’s top 13 games.
Of the recent run of Thursday night sporting events on FOX, Ohio State-Minnesota ranks ahead of the MLB “Field of Dreams” game (Yankees-White Sox: 3.2, 5.85M) and behind the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game (Steelers-Cowboys: 4.0, 7.31M).
For the night, Ohio State-Minnesota was comfortably television’s highest rated program in all the key adult demographics and the most-watched. In adults 18-49, the game’s 1.7 rating nearly doubled the second-place mark of 0.9 for the CBS reality show “Big Brother.”
FOX now owns the two largest audiences of the very early college football season, both Big Ten games. Nebraska-Illinois last Saturday averaged 3.22 million.
FOX trounced ESPN’s competing game, a weather-delayed matchup of Boise State and UCF. The Knights’ win averaged 841,000 viewers, down 48% from UCLA-Cincinnati two years ago (1.63M) and ESPN’s least-watched game on the opening Thursday of the season since at least 2008. Over on ESPNU, ECU-Appalachian State drew 245,000.
ESPN also drew 841,000 for UAB-Jacksonville State the previous night.
Most-watched college football games on FOX
Excluding bowl and conference championship games
[Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 9.3, Fox Sports PR]
