People love some college football! On Tuesday ESPN put out some year-in-review stats for its college football games. Total reach (watched at least some college football on ABC/ESPN) of 179,000,000 watching over 100 BILLION minutes. ESPN has more college football games and rightfully boasted that the 100 billion minutes was more than twice as much as all the nationally rated networks combined.
Michigan versus Ohio State on ABC (at noon, no less) was easily the most-watched game of the season with 16.8 million viewers:
|
Rank |
TV Viewership |
Game |
Date |
Network |
|
1 |
16,841,000 |
Michigan at Ohio State |
Nov. 26, 2016 |
ABC |
|
2 |
11,093,000 |
Alabama vs. Florida |
Dec. 3, 2016 |
CBS |
|
3 |
10,945,000 |
Notre Dame at Texas |
Sept. 4, 2016 |
ABC |
|
4 |
10,385,000 |
Alabama at LSU |
Nov. 5, 2016 |
CBS |
|
5 |
9,286,000 |
Louisville at Clemson |
Oct. 1, 2016 |
ABC |
|
6 |
9,189,000 |
Wisconsin at Penn State |
Dec. 3, 2016 |
FOX |
|
7 |
8,964,000 |
Ohio State at Wisconsin |
Oct. 15, 2016 |
ABC |
|
8 |
8,455,000 |
Texas A&M at Alabama |
Oct. 22, 2016 |
CBS |
|
9 |
8,354,000 |
Ole Miss vs. Florida State |
Sept. 5, 2016 |
ESPN |
ESPN also had a good year with the Saturday Night Football package on ABC which averaged nearly 6 million viewers for the season and was the most-watched college football franchise of the year beating out SEC on CBS (and all the others) in viewership and in all key advertising demographics.
I’m not sure when the last time Saturday Night Football beat the SEC on CBS in viewership but it’s been at least four years:
| Year | SEC on CBS | ABC Saturday Night Football |
| 2016 | 5,651,000 | 5,996,000 |
| 2015 | 5,608,000 | 5,462,000 |
| 2014 | 6,397,000 | 6,197,000 |
| 2013 | 7,353,000 | 5,750,000 |
Sweet home Alabama: across ABC and ESPN’s Nielsen-measured networks, Birmingham was the top local market followed by Columbus, Ohio:
|
Rank |
Local Rating |
Market |
|
1 |
7.4 |
Birmingham |
|
2 |
6.7 |
Columbus |
|
3 |
4.9 |
Dayton |
|
4 |
4.7 |
Greenville |
|
5 |
3.9 |
Cleveland |
|
6 |
3.8 |
Knoxville |
|
7 |
3.7 |
Nashville |
|
8 |
3.6 |
Detroit |
|
9 |
3.6 |
Oklahoma City |
|
10 |
3.6 |
Atlanta |
|
11 |
3.5 |
Louisville |
|
12 |
3.4 |
Tulsa |
|
13 |
3.4 |
New Orleans |
|
14 |
3.3 |
Austin |
|
15 |
3.2 |
Memphis |
Streaming is growing, but…ESPN’s average minute streaming audience was up 31% year over year but it’s still pretty small. While nearly 4 million streamed at least a tiny beat in week one of the season and 3 million streamed at least a little in week 13, the year’s most-watched (and most-streamed) game that averaged 16.8 million on TV averaged only 279,000 via streaming. Here are the top 4 most-streamed games of the season:
|
Rank |
Average Minute Audience |
Game |
Date |
|
1 |
279,000 |
Michigan at Ohio State |
Nov. 26, 2016 |
|
2 |
231,000 |
Ole Miss vs. Florida State |
Sept. 5, 2016 |
|
3 |
200,000 |
Louisville at Clemson |
Oct. 1, 2016 |
|
4 |
194,000 |
Notre Dame at Texas |
Sept. 4, 2016 |