Texas Longhorns wide receiver Isaiah Bond makes a touchdown Syndication: Austin American-Statesman

ABC’s new SEC college football package is perhaps the viewership success story of the year.

The network’s first season as the SEC’s lead broadcast partner has proven to be an unambiguous success.

Last Saturday’s SEC on ABC doubleheader captured a superlative that hasn’t been awarded in 28 years.

ABC’s afternoon broadcast of the Alabama Crimson Tide versus the Tennessee Volunteers and primetime broadcast of the Georgia Bulldogs versus the Texas Longhorns both averaged an audience of over 10 million viewers. That is the first time a single television network has aired two college football games that both averaged eight figures on the same day since 1996.

The Georgia-Texas nightcap led the way for ABC with an audience averaging 12.9 million viewers, good for the most-watched game this season, surpassing 11.99 million viewers for Georgia-Alabama in Week 5, also on ABC. Viewership for the Bulldogs and Longhorns peaked at 14.1 million. The new SEC foes also secured ESPN/ABC’s most-watched college football game since 2016.

As for the Crimson Tide and Volunteers earlier in the afternoon, ABC averaged 10.7 million viewers. That game hit a peak audience of 14.7 million, actually higher than the record-setting primetime game. Additionally, the network never dipped below an average of 10 million viewers between 6:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., per ESPN PR.

Last week, ABC scored nine of the top 12 college football audiences this season. CBS, Fox, and NBC have each contributed one game to that list. Should these Week 8 contests slot in as the top two audiences of the week once viewership data is fully available, that would improve ABC to 11 of the top 14 college football audiences this season and make it the only network to have any games reach over 10 million viewers this season.

This kind of ratings dominance is atypical for college football, but in a new era of media rights deals—where ESPN properties control the entirety of the SEC while the Big Ten is split between three different partners: CBS, Fox, and NBC—it may become the norm.

[ESPN PR]

About Drew Lerner

Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.