Michigan’s Victory Over Ohio State Draws Second-Largest Audience Ever For Rivalry Game
Michigan fought its way to a victory over Ohio State on Saturday and, in the process, blew the rest of the college football season out of the water.
The rivalry game between the No. 2 and No. 3 teams averaged more than 19M viewers on Fox, marking the largest audience for their matchup since 2006 (when the teams were No. 1 and No. 2). That game holds the audience record with 21M viewers on ABC.
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While this game always manages decent viewership, it’s likely this is its peak for a while, given the increased interest in Michigan this season due to head coach Jim Harbaugh’s suspension over an illegal scouting scandal.
In second place, by a wide margin, was the Alabama-Auburn Iron Bowl with 9M viewers. That’s still quite a large audience, considering the previous few weeks of college football had been quite sleepy. In fact, it’s the largest audience for an SEC conference game this season.
In third place was Washington State-Washington with 5.85M viewers on Fox. Georgia-Georgia Tech came in fourth with 5.33M viewers on ABC, while Florida-Florida State rounded out the top five with 5.07M viewers on ESPN.
As always, several networks are not Nielsen-rated, meaning their audiences aren’t reported week-over-week. Those include the SEC Network, ACC Network, CBS Sports Network, and the Pac-12 Network. ESPN+ and Peacock are also not Nielsen-rated for live programming.
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