Jan 8, 2024; Houston, TX, USA; A view of the CFP Trophy before the 2024 College Football Playoff national championship game between the Michigan Wolverines and the Washington Huskies at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Going into this college football season, there was heightened interest in the TV ratings for the sport with the expansion of the College Football Playoff. 

The College Football Playoff is expanding from four to 12 teams, thereby seemingly lessening the consequences of individual regular season games. Alabama has lost two games and still could make the playoff, for instance.

There was some buzz ratings might suffer because regular season games are less meaningful, at least as it pertains to making the playoff. A common refrain about the NBA is the regular season is meaningless because more than half the teams make the postseason. But college football ratings through just more than half the season have on average risen, bucking the notion that by adding playoff teams, viewership would dip.

“We’ve had some really good top five matchups, two versus three, one versus five, you know, things like that, and those are always going to, pop, a pretty good number,” said Bob Thompson, a sports media consultant. “And then I think just in general, one of the things that the conference realignment has brought about is you’ve got a lot of teams playing teams for the first time. So there’s a certain amount of interest just because of the novelty.”

Those now conference matchups – Texas v Georgia, Ohio State v Oregon – typically never occurred other than in bowls. Three of the top five games by viewership thus far are new intra-conference rivalries. High profile programs rarely scheduled good teams out of conference so as not to threaten a perfect or near perfect record. Due to conference realignment, those games are now happening.

“T​​here’s room for more games, more weeks, right,” said Parick Crakes, a media consultant. “Primarily because it’s already a small schedule and everybody plays one game a week now. Not like if you told somebody that Major League Baseball needs another 20 regular season games.”

College football on ESPN platforms are up 10 percent and is the media giant’s most-watched season since 2016, a spokeswoman wrote. A caveat there is of course ESPN/ABC added the SEC this year, so its ratings were bound to rise. CBS, which had the SEC last year, said because it doesn’t have a current contract with Nielsen, it does not have ratings for this season. 

At NBC, whose college football portfolio includes Notre Dame and the Big 10, ratings are also up.

Our Big Ten Saturday Night primetime package (7:30pm ET each Saturday on NBC and Peacock) is averaging 4.1M viewers across NBC and Peacock, up +111% from last year through the first 8 games (2.0M),” a network spokesman emailed. “Our biggest viewership this season was Ohio State-Oregon on 10/12 – 10.4 million viewers.

“Last year, we had a huge Ohio State-Notre Dame game on NBC and Peacock in primetime (but as a Notre Dame home game, it is not part of the Big Ten Saturday Night package, and not part of the above average from last year)…that game averaged 10.6 million viewers. If that game is included, and we just go with a primetime NBC/Peacock Saturday night average, we’re up 2% from last year at this point.”

Fox Sports did not have season figures immediately available, but a spokesman wrote, “our numbers will be a bit skewed as we have had an inordinate amount of blowouts this year – and the strength of our schedule starts this wknd…. Followed by Penn State-Ohio State next weekend…followed by Ohio State-Michigan.”

Thompson emphasized that for any sport that is expanding its postseason, part of the reason is giving hope to more fanbases. With eight more teams making the College Football Playoff, and potentially an expansion to 16 teams in future years, more meaning is added to more games, he added. 

For his part, Thompson is curious if any pair of teams end up playing three times: once in the regular season, another time in the conference championship and then again in the College Football Playoff. Playing a trio of games was not possible because previously conferences had divisional winners play in the championship, and the loser would not make it to the playoffs. Now Georgia and Texas – the top game so far this year – could potentially play two more times with far more at stake each time.

Here are the top five college football games by viewership through October 24th this season:

  • 13.2 million: Georgia-Texas, ABC
  • 12 million: Georgia-Alabama, ABC
  • 10.8 million: Alabama-Tennessee, ABC
  • 10.2 million: Ohio State–Oregon, NBC
  • 9.35 million: Texas-Michigan, Fox

About Daniel Kaplan

Daniel Kaplan has been covering the business of sports for more than two decades. A proud founding reporter of SportsBusiness Journal, he spent the last four years at The Athletic.