Heisman Trophy Ceremony draws best audience since 2012 with move to ABC

A shift from ESPN to ABC led the Heisman Trophy Ceremony to its best television audience in over a decade.

While most of the headlines following this year’s Heisman Trophy Ceremony went to the runner-up after he had some choice words for voters, the award’s winner, Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, can say more people watched him win the Heisman than in any year since 2012.

According to a report by Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, Saturday’s Heisman ceremony averaged 4.3 million viewers on ABC. It was the first year that the Heisman Trophy Ceremony moved from ESPN to its sister broadcast network. The hour-long special was sandwiched between two college football games: the FCS Quarterfinal on ABC at 3:30 p.m. ET, and the Bucked Up LA Bowl at 8 p.m. ET.

Viewership for the event jumped by 72% versus Travis Hunter’s win last year (2.5 million viewers on ESPN). As one would expect, the audience peaked in the final quarter-hour of the ceremony when Mendoza’s win was announced. Per SBJ, the peak audience on ABC was 5.8 million viewers.

Over on ESPN, the College Football Awards show, which hands out all of the other non-Heisman awards for the season, averaged 582,000 on Friday night, marking a 48% increase versus last year and the best audience the show has seen since 2018.

With College Football Playoff expansion seemingly imminent, it’s unclear where the Heisman Trophy Ceremony will end up on the calendar. Any move to 16 (or 24 or 28) teams would likely necessitate playing games on the second weekend of December.

The ceremony isn’t the biggest viewership draw, but it’s certainly a pillar of the end of college football season. Moving it would just be one of the many knock-on effects of expanding the playoff.