This college football season marks the first of a ten-year deal between the SEC and ESPN, solidifying ESPN networks as the home of all things SEC sports. And already, the deal is paying massive dividends.
For the past two decades, the 3:30 p.m. ET timeslot was the driving force of a successful partnership between the SEC and CBS, which was typically reserved for the best SEC matchup each week.
ESPN has shifted from that strategy, instead reserving the 7:30 p.m. primetime timeslot for the game of the week. And thus far, that strategy has led to a significant bump in viewership for the network.
According to Sports Media Watch, ABC is bringing in an average of 5.5 million viewers for college football games through the first five weeks of the college football season. This is the network’s highest viewership number since 2016 and the second-highest since 2011 at this point in the season.
The viewership numbers represent a 32% year-over-year increase at this point in the season over last year, which makes sense when you consider the ESPN family of networks was in between deals, awaiting the deal with the SEC while coming off a deal with the Big Ten.
Saturday Night Football, which is the name for the 7:30 p.m. primetime timeslot on ABC, is averaging 7.3 million viewers, which was headlined by the Week 5 matchup between Alabama and Georgia, the most-watched game across all networks this season. These numbers rank as the highest for Saturday Night Football on ABC since 2011.
It’s long been assumed that the SEC is king when it comes to ratings in college football. So this kind of increase in viewership certainly isn’t a surprise by any means. But regardless, ESPN has to be pleased with how things have gone early on in its partnership with the SEC.
[Sports Media Watch, Photo Credit: ABC]
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.