Friday night’s game on Fox between the No. 14 Kansas State Wildcats and No. 20 Arizona Wildcats wasn’t particularly exciting, but that didn’t stop a whole lot of college football fans from tuning in.
KSU’s Avery Johnson threw two touchdown passes while Dylan Edwards returned a punt 71 yards for a touchdown, leading the way for Kansas State to notch a 31-7 victory that counted as a non-conference game despite both schools currently being in the Big 12.
Monday, Fox announced that the game, the first in their Fox College Football Friday broadcast this season, garnered 2,582,000 viewers, making it their best Friday night numbers in five months. That number, which peaked at 2,883,000, was also up 46% from the previous week’s Friday night programming (the final SmackDown on Fox).
The inaugural FOX COLLEGE FOOTBALL FRIDAY scored the network’s best Friday night in over five months 📈
Kansas State’s 31-7 win over Arizona earned 2,582,000 viewers on FOX 🏈 pic.twitter.com/w3WsNF0L5N
— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) September 16, 2024
Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ president of insights and analytics, shared that he was encouraged by the numbers.
“Encouraged by this start to the Friday night schedule with a five-month Friday high for Fox despite a lopsided game,” he wrote on X. “Eager to see if we can improve this week with @IlliniFootball and @HuskerFootball.
Encouraged by this start to the Friday night schedule with a five-month Friday high for Fox despite a lopsided game. Eager to see if we can improve this week with @IlliniFootball and @HuskerFootball https://t.co/MV4aI7n50N
— Michael Mulvihill (@mulvihill79) September 16, 2024
The remaining slate of Friday night games includes some potentially attractive matchups, including Michigan State at Oregon (Oct. 4), Rutgers at USC (Oct. 25), and the Mountain West Championship (Dec. 6). While many Big Ten teams will participate, Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State remain committed to not playing on Fridays.
The five-month mention in the announcement was read by some as a shot at WWE, which recently moved SmackDown (which had been airing on Fox on Friday nights) to USA Network. There had reportedly been some bad blood between the two sides as Fox originally planned to move the final three episodes of SmackDown to FS1 to accommodate the start of College Football Friday and WWE ended up leaving for USA early.
[Fox PR]
