Monday night’s College Football Playoff national championship drew an average of 22.1 million viewers, ESPN announced Wednesday. The Ohio State-Notre Dame matchup was down from last year’s Michigan-Washington showdown, which averaged 25 million viewers.
The finale of the inaugural 12-team Playoff drew the third-smallest viewership for a title game in the CFP era, according to data compiled by Sports Media Watch. It outdrew the January 2021 Alabama–Ohio State blowout and Georgia’s rout of TCU at the end of the 2022 season. The first CFP championship (Ohio State-Oregon a decade ago) averaged 34.1 million viewers.
Monday’s championship peaked with more than 26 million viewers and had more than half of all TV viewers in the 18-49 age demographic. ESPN said it attracted the largest TV audience of any non-NFL sporting event in the last year.
The title game drew the largest viewership of the season. The Ohio State-Oregon Rose Bowl was second (21.1 million), followed by the Buckeyes’ win over Texas in the Cotton Bowl (20.6 million).
The figures provide more data as conference commissioners and university presidents/chancellors consider future changes to the Playoff. The first round went head-to-head against the NFL, and the expanded field pushed the title game back on the calendar to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. — Baker
What does viewership dip mean?
Given the mighty television brands that played in the title game, the final viewership number feels like a missed opportunity. You wonder how much higher the number would have been had the game been tied entering the fourth quarter. Sports Media Watch’s Jon Lewis reported Ohio State-Notre Dame was the fifth-least-watched national title game since the debut of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998.
ESPN did avoid a total disaster; Georgia’s blowout of TCU remains by far the least-watched title game (17.2 million) of the modern era. One of the things that will juice the numbers heading forward is beginning with the 2026-27 season, as part of the new media rights agreement, the CFP national championship will air on ABC in addition to a MegaCast presentation across ESPN platforms. That over-the-air component will likely prevent any significant viewership fallout, even in a world of declining linear television viewing. — Deitsch
Required reading
(Photo: Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)
