FOX Sports has announced that its recent broadcast of the Ohio State Buckeyes’ matchup against the Michigan Wolverines averaged 19.065 million viewers on FOX, rendering it the most-watched regular season college football game on any network since 2011. Furthermore, the viewership figure makes the matchup the most-watched regular season college football game in the history of FOX Sports. The game was up 11% from last year’s broadcast, which peaked at 19.6 million viewers and also broke the previous record for the most-viewed college football broadcast in FOX Sports history.
This time around, “The Game” peaked at 22.9 million viewers in the quarter-hour from 3:30 to 3:45 p.m. EST on FOX and also finished as the most-streamed college football game in network history. Viewership data for the matchup comes from Nielsen Media Research and Adobe Analytics, according to the news shared on Wednesday morning by FOX Sports.
Additional data from Sports Media Watch reveals that the game averaged a 9.0 rating and drew the second-largest audience on record, only surpassed by their matchup in 2006 when the two teams were ranked first and second. For the holiday weekend, the game was the fifth most-watched telecast behind the NFL Thanksgiving tripleheader and Sunday national window for the NFL on CBS, which included the overtime matchup between the Buffalo Bills and Philadelphia Eagles. Second in the ratings was the Iron Bowl game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Auburn Tigers, which finished with an average of 9.09 million viewers on CBS.
FOX Sports’ Big Noon Saturday broadcast team, consisting of play-by-play announcer Gus Johnson, color commentator Joel Klatt and sideline reporter Jenny Taft, were on the call for the game. The network has broadcast the contest for every year since 2017, excluding the 2020 cancellation of the game. Big Noon Kickoff was also on-site outside of Michigan Stadium for a pregame broadcast featuring host Rob Stone, analysts Brady Quinn, Mark Ingram, Charles Woodson, Matt Leinart and Urban Meyer.
