Sports Ratings Tracker

Saturday’s USF-Miami college football game averaged 720,000 viewers on CW (“Big Data + Panel”). Despite marking the first ranked vs. ranked matchup in network history, it was well short of the network’s official Nielsen record of 1.33 million (panel-only) for South Alabama-Florida State two years ago.

Viewership was also shy of the prior week’s Baylor-SMU game, which drew 1.13 million.

Viewership was impacted by a nearly two-hour weather delay. Per Nielsen panel-only data, the game was averaging nearly one million viewers as of 5:30 PM ET and lost 1/3 of its audience after the delay.

Saturday’s Baylor-SMU college football game averaged 1.0 million viewers on CW, the network’s third-largest college football audience (keeping in mind that this is the first year of Nielsen “Big Data + Panel” measurement). CW also drew 565,000 for Fresno State-Oregon State and 540,000 for San Diego State-Washington State.

All three games outdrew the week one CW contest, Idaho-Washington State at 364,000.