The SEC may have only landed three College Football Playoff teams, but TV viewers were keeping tabs on many more than that throughout the regular season.
The SEC accounted for eight of the 10 most-watched schools during the 2024 regular season, according to Nielsen viewership data released Wednesday.
Georgia, at 8.6 million average viewers per game, was No. 1 by a considerable margin over the second-highest school, Ohio State (6.8 million). The Bulldogs played in two of the three-most watched games of the season, against Alabama (12 million) on Sept. 28 and Texas (13.2 million) on Oct. 19, which both aired on ABC. The Nov. 30 Michigan-Ohio State game on Fox (12.3 million) was the other.
Rounding out the top five were Alabama (6.6 million), Texas (6.4 million) and Tennessee (5.4 million).
They were followed by No. 6 Michigan (5.2 million), No. 7 Texas A&M (4.9 million), No. 8 LSU (4.8 million), No. 9 Kentucky (4.5 million) and No. 10 Florida (4.3 million).
The SEC’s depth propelled it to the top spot overall, but the leagues distanced themselves from their competitors when it came to television ratings. Of the top-10 most-watched games of the regular season, the SEC occupied Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 7 while the Big Ten held the Nos. 2, 4, 6 and 8 spots. Early-season crossover games between the leagues (Texas-Michigan, USC-LSU), ranked ninth and 10th.
The numbers do not include conference championship games. The data encompassed all games across ABC and the ESPN networks, Fox’s networks, NBC, CBS and the CW. No conference networks were included, as some are not Nielsen rated. Kentucky’s average may have been inflated because its four ABC games were the only times it appeared on a Nielsen-rated network.
Before last weekend’s SEC championship, Sankey noted that 16 of the top 20 regular-season broadcasts involved at least one SEC team.
“A piece of the puzzle that was really important for us is to access more over-the-air broadcast TV,” he said. “We viewed that as a fan-friendly opportunity, noting the wide exposure and broad access to over-the-air television.”
This season, ABC took over rights to the SEC’s primary games, which previously aired on CBS, and saw a significant uptick in viewership. ABC’s prime-time (6.4 million) and mid-afternoon (5.8 million) slots were the most watched of any network, according to ESPN.
Nielsen also disclosed the most-watched team in each conference. In addition to Georgia and Ohio State, they were Miami (ACC), Colorado (Big 12), Army (AAC), Colorado State (MWC), Marshall (Sun Belt), UTEP (Conference USA) and Notre Dame (independent).
College football expansion in both the SEC and Big Ten solidified both leagues as ratings gold for the networks. Two of the four highest-rated games involved newcomers, including Georgia-Texas, which had more viewers than any other game. The fourth-most watched game was Ohio State-Oregon. The buildup for Ohio State-Michigan waned until kickoff, which likely caused a ratings drop to No. 2 at 12.3 million viewers. That’s down from 19.07 million in 2023 when the teams competed for a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game and the Playoff.
Clearly, the SEC’s new ESPN deal was a game-changer for the conference’s exposure. Previously, only its top game of the week aired on an over-the-air network, CBS, save for a couple of CBS doubleheaders. This year, the league appeared in all three ABC Saturday windows in 10 of 14 weeks.
The Big Ten still had several highly-viewed games on Fox (as well as the Oct. 12 Oregon-Ohio State game on NBC), but was hurt by a smaller number of matchups between the league’s top teams.
The expanded Playoff is likely to send viewership numbers soaring this month and into January. Last year, the three Playoff games each generated more than 18.7 million viewers; the Michigan-Alabama semifinal was watched by 27.76 million. Four non-Playoff bowls also had more than six million viewers. There are 11 Playoff games this season.
(Photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
