CFP National Championship delivers lackluster audience in first year of expansion

In the inaugural year of the 12-team College Football Playoff, two storied programs were unable to deliver a large audience for ESPN.

Monday’s title game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and Notre Dame Fighting Irish averaged just 22.1 million viewers across the Nielsen-rated ESPN networks, the fifth-least watched title game since the debut of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998, per Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch.

The game, which aired across many ESPN cable networks but not ABC, was still the most-watched college football game of the season and the most-watched non-NFL sporting event since last year’s Super Bowl. It’s only the second time in five years that the national championship game has also been the most-watched game of the season.

Predictably, given that Ohio State opened up a large lead prior to Notre Dame’s late comeback, the game peaked early in the night with 26.1 million viewers during the 8:30 p.m. ET quarter-hour.

According to Lewis, three of the five least-watched title games on record have come in the past five seasons. Georgia’s blowout of TCU two seasons ago averaged 17.2 million viewers, and Alabama-Ohio State averaged 19.1 million in 2021.

There are a number of reasons why this year’s CFP title game drew the lackluster number it did. The first and most obvious reason is that it’s the first year that the college football season has gone so late into January. Fans simply aren’t used to tuning in to college football this late in the year.

By late January, much of the spotlight has rightfully shifted to the NFL. Under the old four-team format, the title game was contested on the Monday immediately following Week 18 of the NFL season. Now, it is played on the Monday immediately following the NFL’s Divisional Round that schedules two games on Saturday and two on Sunday. In terms of the total volume of minutes watched, the Divisional Round can eclipse the Super Bowl for the NFL. Football fatigue may play a real factor when viewers decide whether or not to watch by the time Monday night comes around.

The competitiveness of the game likely also contributed to the low-end number. Although Notre Dame did stage a comeback late to make the game interesting, some viewers likely tuned out when Ohio State took a 31-7 lead.

Of course, Monday was also Inauguration Day in the United States. Some would-be college football viewers were likely instead focused on news coverage of the day’s events.

Given the circumstances, pulling a huge number was an uphill battle for ESPN in the first year of the expanded playoff. 22.1 million is very respectable given the hand they were dealt. And it’s important to consider that the increased inventory throughout the entirety of the playoff more than made up for any diminished title game viewing the network experienced.

One could expect that, as the format becomes more familiar and as the playoff committee considers tweaks to the schedule, viewership in future years will increase.