The biggest game of the year (so far) had the biggest audience of the year. ESPN has announced the matchup was the most-watched college football game of the season so far.
The audience peaked at 14.1 million, according to ESPN, and it was the most watched game on ESPN’s family of networks since the 2016 Ohio State-Michigan game (16.84 million). An average of 12.4 million TV viewers tuned in to see No. 5 Georgia’s 30-15 win over No. 1 Texas from DKR.
This is a big audience for the Longhorns for the second week in a row. The Texas-Oklahoma game had 7.63 million watching at home, according to ESPN. That was the second most-watched game of the week behind Ohio State-Oregon, which had 9.6 million viewers. It was second most-watched Texas-OU game since 2009.
This was the first time this season the Longhorns have generated more than 10 million viewers. The Texas-Michigan game had an estimated 9.19 million watching the second week of the season.
Final @ESPNCFB Week 8 numbers are in & ABC won the day in ALL windows 🎉
🏈 @GeorgiaFootball–@TexasFootball | 13.2M viewers
🏈 @AlabamaFTBL–@Vol_Football | 10.8M viewers
🏈 @CanesFootball–@LouisvilleFB | 4.3M viewers pic.twitter.com/LHdGHqcoZD— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) October 22, 2024
It definitely appears Disney, owners of ABC and ESPN, are benefitting from orchestrating Texas and Oklahoma’s move to the SEC, creating a new 16-team league. SEC games on ABC have the top three most-watched audiences of the season.
