Unsurprisingly, Michigan’s win over Ohio State on Saturday is the new most-watched college football game of the season, and also set a college football viewership record for Fox.
Per Fox Sports PR, the game averaged 17 million viewers.
.@FOXSports' record-breaking weekend continues!
Michigan-Ohio State was the most-watched regular season CFB game EVER on FOX with 17 million viewers
– Most-watched regular season CFB game on any net since 2011
– Peaked at 19.6 million viewers
– Up +3% over 2021's matchup on FOX pic.twitter.com/DdZglhNJqP— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) November 27, 2022
It’s not a surprise that Michigan-Ohio State drew this many viewers. A year ago, it was the most-watched game of the regular season with 15.893 million viewers. In our staff predictions post last week, our guesses for viewership ranged between 15.6 million and 18.1 million (with Jay Rigdon accurately predicting the audience of 17 million, earning himself a Cadillac El Dorado. Michael Dixon wins a set of steak knives for guessing 16.9 million).
To me, the more surprising note is that this was the most-watched regular season game since 2011. This game was more watched than every regular season game since LSU’s 9-6 win over Alabama 11 years ago, which averaged over 20 million viewers on CBS.
Later this week, we’ll see how the other college football games over the weekend compared (in other words, which games won the non-noon timeslots), and if the noon games provided any actual competition for Fox.
