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This fall, the college football season never attracted the ridiculous viewership we typically see on Saturdays throughout the season, which included the two semi-finals which failed to reach 20 million viewers. and all of the conference championship games fell short of ten million viewers. The floor for the national college football playoffs had been set at 25 million viewers, with every previous game reaching at least that mark.
Unfortunately for the college football world, the floor was lowered by Alabama’s 52-24 destruction of Ohio state on Monday night. The game drew a total of 18.654 million viewers across ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, down from every previous title game in the playoff era and down from both of this year’s semi-finals. .
The previous low returned for the game in January 2017, when Clemson’s victory over Alabama drew 25.226 million viewers. This year’s count is down 27% from last year’s LSU-Clemson game, which drew 25.588 million viewers.
It’s not only a historic low for the playoff era, it’s also lower than all of the BCS title games that have taken place in the nearly two decades leading up to the playoffs. According to the excellent Sports Media Watch records, the least watched BCS National Championship game was USC’s defenestration of Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl in 2005, which drew 21.419 million viewers.
College football is also just the latest sport to see its premier event experience a massive decline or all-time high, with Masters, World Series, and NBA finals among others. Will college football power brokers implement any changes to the playoffs after this low-audience season, or will they just blame that on the pandemic and other political factors and hope for a better season next fall? I guess this will be the last, especially since there’s a built-in excuse for a low semi-final audience over the next two seasons: The semi-finals will be held on New Years Eve in 2021 (a Friday) and in 2022 (a Saturday). ).
[Data via ShowBuzz Daily, Sports Media Watch]
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