Here are a couple of viewership tidbits from last night’s broadcast to digest.
I’m sure Baghdad Bill will do his usual fine job of dissembling with regard to those numbers, but here’s my question: what if they’re an indication of an inherent structural problem?
More specifically, I would suggest that both Disney and the brains behind the CFP have adopted a marketing strategy that amounts to converting college football’s regional brand into a more national one. After all, a bigger audience is where the money is.
But what if they’re wrong about being able to change public attitudes about college football? (New Year’s Eve wasn’t exactly a success in that department.) What if the sport’s regional appeal is as good as it gets? What if moving the title game from ABC to ESPN will always result in reduced viewership? How does matching teams up from small Southern college towns in a national title game ever resonate with the same kind of passion outside of the South that it does inside?
Most importantly, if this really is a reflection of reality, how long do the people running ESPN and college football keep beating their heads in a futile effort to create a market that will never exist? And how hard do they beat their heads doing so?
It’s not that I have an answer to any of that. It’s that I doubt people like Delany do, either.
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UPDATE: Nick Saban has a related question.
Get The Picture 
The lowest rated NFL Wildcard game drew right at 10 million MORE viewers than this game. There is a reason they don’t want to go up against the NFL on Wildcard Weekend. I think a Friday championship game would be good for viewers, not so much for the host town.
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I was texting with a friend in Chicago who said he went to a sports bar to watch the game with some buddies last night. The bar had one room reserved for a painting class and another for a corporate event. He told the host he was there for the game, and the host replied, “what game?” If Michigan State or Ohio State had been in the game, it would have registered higher nationwide, probably. I reminded my friend that in Chicago, they may watch college football based on who they like, but here we watch it based on who we hate, which gives us way more viewing interest.
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Tell him to go to the Houndstooth near Wrigley Field. I quietly pulled for LSU to beat bama twice at that place. No shortage or TVs or bammers there.
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It would be interesting to know if the ratings included those streaming the game. I streamed most of it using a 2nd monitor to keep ESPN on a bigger screen and ESPN2 on the Audio. Listening to the coaches was much more interesting than the standard garbage from the talking heads.
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As long as we’re comparing concerns, mine is this: Ratings mechanics deciding that it’s in the be$t interest of the NCAA to have teams in huge regional markets in the playoffs. Clemson-Bama? Too much South in our mouth. Too much Meh for the rest of Nielsen World. We need more teams who pull bombshell numbers, right?
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The problem is that too much time passes between the end of the regular season and the playoffs/national title game.
Those dead weeks in December are brutal, and the fact that there are ~40 meaningless games dumped on people’s heads in between just muddies the water.
They need to move the playoff games to December and the national title game back to Jan 1/2/3 (or something around there). This is especially true if they ever go to an 8 team playoff.
A friend told me yesterday that the CFB season is now 2 days longer for the last 2 teams than the NFL schedule for Super Bowl contenders. If that’s off, it ain’t off by much. That’s nuts. And it is all due to that gigantic dead period in December.
And before you tell me “the kids are taking exams in December”…. lol.
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I’m sorry. I must have missed the abbreviated schedule last year… you know, the one with 15% higher ratings.
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Sic em Dawg!
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I’m sorry. I must have missed where we’re only allowed to talk about this year vs. last year… you know, instead of talking about a broader issue which is the ~month disappearance of CFB that really kills the excitement and momentum of the season – possibly contributing to CFB’s title game sadly under-performing college basketball’s title game.
I neither said nor implied last year had an abbreviated schedule. I have no idea where you’re pulling that from.
Alabama and Clemson won their championship games, putting them in the playoff, on Dec 5 and didn’t play again for 26 days. That’s a brutal buzzkill.
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There was a decline from last year to this year, which had nothing to do with the “disappearance” you’re blaming. I didn’t think my point was that hard to follow, but what do I know?
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What the hell, dude. When did it become a rule that someone commenting has to directly and 100% address ONLY your exact point?
I am CLEARLY addressing a RELATED point.
This really shouldn’t be hard to follow, but what do I know?
Stop being a jerk. Sheesh. I have no idea why you’re nitpicking something utterly stupid and irrelevant.
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Nobody said you couldn’t address my exact point. Nobody said I couldn’t disagree with your point, either.
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Then disagree with my point if you want. I welcome it. In three responses, you’ve yet to do that.
Assuming you’re attempting to disagree with my point, you’ve said nothing about whether the 26 day gap hurts ratings, interest, and excitement in the CFB playoff. You know… my actual point… that you just said you’re endeavoring to disagree with.
Instead, you’ve apparently become butthurt that I chose to talk about something other than this year vs. last year or whether or not there’s a national market for CFB.
I have absolutely no idea why you’ve chosen to attempt to ridicule me for an absurd point I never actually made (“I must have missed the abbreviated schedule last year”).
I don’t recall running over your dog or knocking up your sister, so this absurd hostility out of nowhere makes no sense to me.
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If my tone offends you, my apologies.
As to a specific criticism, this is how December has been for a long time, and the bowls don’t seem to have had much impact before.
I’d argue that moving CFB’s crown jewel off free TV to ESPN is having a bigger impact than what you blame.
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Apology accepted.
1) You are right that the December break has existed a long time. But I think the impact of these long breaks gets bigger the more casual the fan is. As CFB tries to broaden it’s base of support, the huge December break is becoming more of an issue making it harder to maintain growth.
They already have the die-hards who will watch no matter what. Now they have to keep people engaged who didn’t grow up in an SEC school region (for example). For those folks, the 26 and 11 day gaps trigger a “CFB season is over, right?” feeling.
2) I think it was less of an impact – but still had an impact – when it was 1 long break then the title game. But now we get 1 long break, 1 game, another long-ish break (11 days) and a title game. That’s a 37 day span with only 2 meaningful games.
3) I think you are definitely right that moving games to non-free channels has an impact. It still kinda blows my mind that MNF is on ESPN.
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Your point about selecting the 4 teams December 5 and waiting 26 days to play is a good one.
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Thanks.
I am a huge CFB fan but I have to admit that by the time the title game rolls around it feels like “that old thing? It’s still going?”
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The disappointing numbers can be directly related to the regional interest of last night’s game. The game itself was very entertaining for the entire time period.
To grow, college football needs to determine how to better market itself outside of Texas, Ohio, and the southeastern US.
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What if a national market simply doesn’t exist? That’s what I’m asking here.
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I do not think it exists…I have traveled enough out of the South to say that most just don’t care all that much about college football. Last nights ratings are probably more of the norm…barring ND or OHIO State/Mich in the game.
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Exactly the South will watch a Big(10+2 or 12-2) vs PAC game but they will not turn in to see 2 Southern teams play.
I still question how much online viewership impacted #s. Online statistics are not collected the same way.
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Looking at the NFL ratings and the ratings for college basketball, the market is definitely there. In the east and midwest, it’s not like they are competing with a lot of outdoor activities this time of year.
The question is determining where they have the greatest opportunity and what they need to do to make it more appealing.
The advertisers are beginning to push back, so I see the NCAA and conference leadership finally having to to deal with the issue this year instead of spinning it.
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The difference Bulldog Joe is in the other parts of the country the NFL is a much bigger draw than college football.. In the NE they couldn’t care less about college football. Its the Patriots, Jets, Giants and Eagles.
In the Midwest its the nfl teams there (and some support for UM, OS, etx… but overall nowhere close to NFL interest.
Out west they don’t care about anything.
Now look at the south – example (Ok, an extreme example, but still…) the state of Alabama has nothing going for it except college football. So everyone in the state is either bama or auburn and that is their primary sense of identity. They bend or eliminate any rules that get in the way of them being successful. That is the end all/be all in the state.
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….the state of Alabama has nothing going for it except college football. So everyone in the state is either bama or auburn and that is their primary sense of identity. They bend or eliminate any rules that get in the way of them being successful. That is the end all/be all in the state.
Bazooka, you’re probably a good guy, but, fuck you.
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Isn’t the response “so?”
It’s not like there are better options for programming. Those numbers are down, but they’re better than almost all other programming on television.
What’s the end game of the question? If it is what it is, the product is still good for TV, just like all sports are good for broadcasters.
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It is for me. Then again, I’m not the one trying to change the market.
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Fair point. It seems to me the ratings for the college football final could be dependent on the game’s participants, just like ratings for other sporting events, save the Super Bowl, are dependent on the participants.
Clemson isn’t the name brand that Southern Cal, Ohio State or Notre Dame is.
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Notre Dame is a national brand, the exception that proves the rule.
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Exactly… unless Georgia is playing in it, my philosophy is “if I have nothing better to do, Ill watch it”. I have begun to have the same philosophy about the super bowl (but the difference being there are tons of super bowl parties to go to, not so much for the CFP).
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NASCAR would like to know what you find out.
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Nascar screwed themselves once they took out all the bad guys and tried to be more corporate.
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+1,000
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I’ve lived in the midwest, south, NE, and mid-Atlantic and can confidently say that the SE is THE big market for college football. Short of the competitive landscape changing – for example, Boston College and Missouri becoming the new Alabama and FSU – I don’t see anywhere else supplanting it.
I think there are three main reasons for this:
1) State universities’ predominance in southern states. Going to the state flagship university or Tech/A&M in the south is still a pretty big deal, while in many other places it’s not. And, personal affiliation is still probably the biggest factor in who’s a fan and who’s not. If even 20% of high school seniors wind up at the flagship school or the Tech/A&M, that’s a lot of personally affiliated new fans each year.
2) There’s a long tradition of competitive college football in the south, and a significant portion of the population really cares about it. In places like Minnesota and Massachusetts, not so much (maybe they did before WWII, but not lately).
3) Related, local geographic affiliation also plays a very strong role. In many southern states, there’s nothing but the college game, and in GA and LA the college teams were in existence and very popular long before the (historically crappy) Falcons and Saints were. Moreover, Southerners tend to have a very strong sense of place and stay close to home throughout their lives. This means the fan-base remains predominantly local, favoring local rivalries (for example, UGA’s five big rivals are all in-state or in a neighboring state).
There only region that more or less compares is the Rust Belt, but even there, pro teams typically elicit more passion. The rest of the country, sure, some people like college ball, but more like the NFL, and even more don’t seem particularly interested.
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I think another, related point is that for years and years and years, there just weren’t many NFL teams in the south worth cheering for. Atlanta and Tampa Bay had long, long stretches of ineptitude. Miami was good, but not near anybody (geographically). The Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Tennessee franchises weren’t there yet. There was just a void of teams for fans to attach to, so all that love went to the state university teams instead.
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Put me in it doesn’t exist camp. When I travel out west they don’t love CFB like we do and they certainly don’t stress over like we do.
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I refuse to pay for cable/satellite. And so if a game is on ESPN I listen to it on ESPN radio online. It sucks when it comes to the CFP, but I’m not paying for TV. That’s moronic. And if I really really want to see a game, I just go to a bar. Cheap2Win!
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Try Sling TV. $25 for all the ESPN channels minus the Longhorn Network. It certainly got me through the football season well.
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$25? I don’t think you understand just how cheap I am.
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Easy to spend more than that at a bar just to see a game. Are you paying for internet access? IF so, why? 🙂
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There’s more two legged deer at the bar.
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He is posting from work, so no, 😉 , hey Jared do we work together, I have a single co-worker that comes back tot he office every night at 7 to surf because it is free (I always announce when I enter the building so I don’t see or hear anything I don’t want to)
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Did the other available options effect the numbers? I know I listened to the “sounds of the game” version because I don’t want to hear Herbie’s voice ever. I really liked it. Its like having the best seat in the house and no BS from the TV crew.
Is it possible that people were watched the 72 other versions ESPN had and not just the main ESPN version? In short, do we know what the total numbers were and whether they were down?
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I would have watched that version on Espn Classic…thus, no HD, no go for me. Should have put it on the Deuce.
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I used the ESPN app to bluetooth the audio to headphones and watched the HD version. Anything not to hear Herbie….
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They didn’t bother me, game was plenty interesting enough, didn’t have to ramble much.
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Damn. I wish I’d thought of that. Though as the night wore on, I found I could tune him out pretty well. Sort of like that car alarm that no one pays attention to.
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That’s what I usually do. It was nice not to have to make the effort to ignore them. Just crowd noise and the stadium announcer. Wonderful experience. I highly recommend it. I wish it was an option for all Georgia games.
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According to ESPN, the gross overnight average for its “megacast” of the game, which included ancillary coverage on ESPN2 and other networks, was 16.0. This puts it ahead of the final three BCS National Championships (2012, 2013 and 2014) and stands as the No. 3-rated telecast in network history.
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I watched the “celebrity” coverage on ESPNEWS for about 10 minutes, got bored, and then switched to the Deuce for the coaches’ perspective. That was outstanding…
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Seconded. The only issue with the coaches was falling behind the live action. Analysis was excellent without the usual B.S.
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Maybe they should play the championship game the following Saturday. No thats just crazy talk you can’t play a college football game on a Saturday night.
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Ratings would be even lower had it gone up against NFL Wildcard game.
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Someone remind me why Friday night is a bad idea? I happen to think that if the championship game had been last Friday it would have had higher viewership. I’ve heard a dozen people in my office say they watched the first quarter or half then turned it off because it was so late on a Monday.
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Because Friday is historically one of the worst nights for TV ratings. People go out on Friday night. They stay in on Sunday and Monday.
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Yep, and the host town isn’t going to want to bid on that nearly as much as a game that puts fans intown the entire weekend.
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That’s the best defense of Monday night I’ve ever heard.
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I could be wrong so anyone feel free to correct me – but I had “heard” awhile ago that the colleges had/have some informal agreement to stay away from Friday night football and leave it to the high schools ?
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Query how the ratings compare to the longer trend, to the last 5-6 BCS National Championship games?
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From Variety:
According to ESPN, the gross overnight average for its “megacast” of the game, which included ancillary coverage on ESPN2 and other networks, was 16.0. This puts it ahead of the final three BCS National Championships (2012, 2013 and 2014) and stands as the No. 3-rated telecast in network history.
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Not having the game on broadcast television is going to hurt, but obviously ESPN’s NFL offering over the weekend didn’t suffer all that much, outdrawing the national title game.
I’m not sure that part of the problem here isn’t the New Year’s Eve factor. I wonder how many people tuned in to the basketball title game wanting to see what happened after watching parts of the bracket and getting into the drama. I wonder how many people that the football title game lost simply because they couldn’t get them involved last weekend. I wonder how much Clemson’s participation hurt, with people being unfamiliar with the brand and perhaps not thinking that they could topple mighty Alabama (though surely they would have gotten the memo by halftime).
One thing seems certain. I don’t like the fact that the future of our sport is in the hands that it’s in right now.
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The Espn NFL game was also on ABC…
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Yeah but look at all of the numbers for the night:
http://variety.com/2016/tv/ratings/ratings-college-football-championship-game-espnow-1201677875/
ABC still won primetime with The Bachelor while the CFP had the highest ratings of any show. Pretty strong for the people wearing mouse ears.
I would chalk this one up to a regionalized match up and then wait to see what happens next year.
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Interesting data regarding college basketball tournament ratings.
Perhaps one difference is that the CBB tournament is an NCAA event that was around before CBB and Turner began televising. The networks did not create the event, format, or method of selection of the teams. The networks did ask for more games, resulting in more teams in the tourney, and moved the semis from Thursday to Saturday and final to Monday, but the networks do not influence the selection method.
The CFP, by contrast, is not an NCAA event. It is created and owned by ESPN and the Bowls. Try foisted a new tradition forged by focus groups. Most importantly, it is created to serve the Bowls and ESPN’s commercial interest. The NCAA owns March Madness and just sells broadcast rights and the schools can make sure the whole thing is run to benefit the NCAA schools.
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“How does matching teams up from small Southern college towns in a national title game ever resonate with the same kind of passion outside of the South that it does inside?”
This is the key sentence. Fact is, outside of the south, people just don’t anywhere near as much about CFB. Heck, many (most?) people have no clue what state Clemson is in, and they view Alabama as, well, Alabama—a very southern state with not much else going on other than football.
Couple this with the disastrous idea of having the semi-finals on NYE, and you have millions of Americans who probably thought the season was already over anyway as well, regardless of who played.
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Yeah I live in Maryland, and even though I’m still technically south of the Mason-Dixon line, almost no one here pays attention to college football. And I mean no one. It’s all about the Ravens/Redskins/Eagles/Steelers/Giants/Jets where I’m at.
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Same thing applies here in Chicago and the Midwest as well as my prior stint in the Northeast. People are hardcore Giants, Bills, Bears, Packers and Vikings fans as opposed to Wildcats, Badgers, Illini and Gophers. The support for those schools’ football is there, but on a much smaller scale than in the South. In many instances, college basketball fandom is on par with college football up here (sacreligous). Pro football is where the RV’s and tailgating is hardcore in many other places around the country.
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Where in MD?
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+100
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BCS NC ratings were really steady in the 15-17 range:(17,17,18,14,17,15,14,22,17,1,16,17,16,14,18,16)
The outlier at 22 was USC vs. Texas. I think last year was a spike, and this year is the norm.
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Correction regarding the 1 in there…it was another 17.
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Above, poster Union Jack says:
“According to ESPN, the gross overnight average for its “megacast” of the game, which included ancillary coverage on ESPN2 and other networks, was 16.0. This puts it ahead of the final three BCS National Championships (2012, 2013 and 2014) and stands as the No. 3-rated telecast in network history.”
How can this be true if, according to your numbers, the final three BCS ratings were 14, 18, 16?
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Good question. I pulled my data from wikipedia, and didn’t verify. here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_National_Championship_Game#Television
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I could see the geniuses mandating one team be from each region of the country so as to try to guarantee a big market for TV purposes only. Who cares who the better teams are.
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You’ll see the CFP committee making sure of this in the future. If they’d had any brains (from their money-making perspective) they would’ve made the play-in matchups Clemson/Alabama and Mich State/Oklahoma to guarantee a more national appeal for the championship game.
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Or just align these initial playoff games on New Years Day.
Don’t want politics dictating the match-ups any more than they already are.
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I’m in the knee of Dixie so it may not even be a regional thing. I’m a UGA fan, not necessarily a football fan, and even less of a football fan at 8:30 on a Monday night. I had no stake in that game whatsoever. Therefore I had very little desire to watch it, again at 8:30 on a Monday night. Now modify it to a more booze friendly time and things change drastically, I’d be much more prone to watch.
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Agree. Monday?! 8:30 start?!
If I was on the left coast and could watch the game after work at 5:30 and be in bed by 11, it might be okay. They make it too damn hard to be a fan.
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I’ve never heard the expression, and I am a sucker for euphemisms, so: What is “The knee of Dixie”?
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I was wondering the same thing… trying to picture a map in my head….
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I can only think maybe it’s Florida?
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(and more specifically, Jax)
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If forced to guess, I’d go with North Carolina.
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If Alabama is the heart of dixie and Richmond the head of dixie, I figure the knee has to be somewhere around the Louisiana delta.
Florida?
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I’da thought NC were the heels of Dixie; not to insult the good Wolfpackers or Deacons. Ahh, the mystery will keep me going.
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Saban: “I am concerned on how does a playoff and a bowl system coexist and how do we make it better or get it right?”
My first reaction is: How bout not having the same damn team winning so much? Borrrrring.
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Technically, it’s the first time Bama has won the CFP.
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Ratings are the problem of ESPN and the rest of the big media, the money hungry athletic administrators but not the fans. Ratings of the media was never a problem when Yale and Harvard were still in the show, LOL. The big media had manipulated the fans of college football.
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I just wonder if a dominant Yale and Harvard football team can even have a worldwide audience considering their influence, LOL.
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This is a bubble. Younger generation more interested in other sports and not addicted to tv. Schools are going to have big contractual obligations and players to pay when revenues dive. Spending like drunks sailors now but payback is coming. May be Harvard v. Yale in the 2025 championship
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If they want it to be a big deal, they should put it on ABC.
The late start stinks for East Coast. Once I found the game on ESPN, I only watched a bit of the 3rd qtr before I fell asleep. Sigh.
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Times are hard. Cable is expensive, Direct TV is ridiculously expensive, CBS is free. Put it on CBS and the ratings will go up.
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If this playoff ever gets expanded, it will be pure exhaustion that will keep even Southern fans tuning off.
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