The strength of Fox’s late-season college football schedule is beginning to ramp up as Saturday’s top-five matchup between Ohio State and Penn State during Fox’s Big Noon Saturday window won the weekend in college football.
The Buckeyes’ win in Happy Valley averaged 9.94 million viewers, good for the fourth most-watched game so far this season, and the most-watched game on Fox. It’s the second week in a row that Big Noon has drawn the largest college football audience.
FOX’s BIG NOON SATURDAY matchup featuring Ohio State’s 20-13 win over Penn State scored 9.94 million viewers 🏈
🏆 Most-watched college football game this season on FOX
🏆 Most-watched Big Ten game of the season on any network pic.twitter.com/KFBPGJyoGF— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) November 6, 2024
Ohio State-Penn State trails three SEC on ABC games as the largest college football audiences so far this season. Those matchups were Georgia-Texas (13.19 million viewers at 7:30 p.m. ET), Georgia-Alabama (11.99 million viewers at 7:30 p.m. ET), and Alabama-Tennessee (10.23 million viewers at 3:30 p.m. ET).
Notably, Fox received Saturday’s game via a pick-swap with NBC before the season started. In Week 7, NBC aired Ohio State-Oregon (9.60 million viewers) with a pick that Fox traded to them in exchange for Saturday’s game (and presumably other draft considerations). It seems that Fox ended up on the better side of that deal, trading down in the draft and earning a larger audience anyway.
Fox’s Big Noon Saturday is now averaging 4.90 million viewers through ten weeks, making it the second most-watched college football window across any network. The SEC on ABC 3:30 p.m. ET window is now averaging 4.48 million viewers through ten weeks, good for third most-watched.
By far the most-watched college football window so far this season is the primetime SEC on ABC window. Through ten weeks, ABC is averaging 6.91 million viewers for its 7:30 p.m. ET kickoffs. The discrepancy between ABC’s afternoon and primetime windows signals a departure from years of tradition when the SEC on CBS would air the best games from the conference in an afternoon time slot.
This past weekend, the SEC on ABC package delivered two more strong audiences for the network. The Florida-Georgia rivalry averaged 7.4 million viewers (including streaming) in the afternoon window, the largest audience on record for the game and the second largest audience of the week. That evening, Texas A&M-South Carolina drew 5.6 million viewers, good for the fourth most-watched game in Week 10.
Week 10 of @ESPNCFB delivered 2 of the top 4 CFB games of the week including:
🏈 Most-watched @GatorsFB–@GeorgiaFootball game on record | 7.4M viewers
🏈 Top primetime game across all networks for @AggieFootball–@GamecockFB | 5.6M viewers pic.twitter.com/kVJR9VqXR1— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) November 6, 2024
With the regular season coming to a close this month, expect Fox’s Big Noon window to stage a bit of a comeback. The network is likely to load up on Ohio State games for its Noon window, and will certainly see a bump from Ohio State-Michigan during rivalry week, even if the Wolverines aren’t the same team they were last year.
Will it be enough to overtake ABC’s primetime window by season’s end? We’ll just have to wait and see.
[Fox Sports PR, ESPN PR]
