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Final Ratings: ESPN's Labor Day Monday CFB Game Sees Lowest Audience In Years

Coverage of the Alabama-West Virginia game last weekend led all telecasts from the opening weekend of the '14 college football season. ABC drew 6.4 million viewers for the game as part of its regionalized 3:30pm ET window, up big from 3.67 million viewers for the same window last year, which featured Mississippi State-Oklahoma State and Syracuse-Penn State. ABC also finished with 6.03 million viewers for the Florida State-Oklahoma State game last Saturday night, down sharply from the 8.14 million viewers for Georgia-Clemson in the same time slot in '13. ESPN’s Clemson-Georgia matchup in the late afternoon window on Saturday drew 3.95 million viewers, down from 5.17 million viewers for Alabama-Virginia Tech last year. The cable net’s Wisconsin-LSU game in primetime drew 4.68 million viewers, up from 3.17 million viewers for LSU-TCU in ’13. ESPN also drew 3.61 million viewers for Miami-Louisville, marking the lowest figure for the Labor Day Monday primetime game over the last decade. ESPN opened the college football season with Ole Miss-Boise State last Thursday night, drawing 2.42 million viewers. Last year’s opening Thursday featured two ESPN games, with North Carolina-South Carolina drawing 3.65 million viewers in the early primetime window and Ole Miss-Vanderbilt drawing 2.74 million viewers in the late primetime window. The marquis game this past Thursday was Texas A&M-South Carolina, but that game aired on SEC Network, which is not Nielsen rated. ESPN also drew 1.54 million viewers for its first “College GameDay” broadcast of the season, which was held in Ft. Worth around the Florida State-Oklahoma State matchup at AT&T Stadium. That figure is down 27% from 2.11 million viewers last year, when the event was held around the Georgia-Clemson game. Meanwhile, FS1 aired four college football games during the opening weekend, averaging 542,000 viewers. That figure is up 10% from 493,000 viewers for five games last year. The increase also helped FS1 to its most-viewed week since early March. NBC also drew 2.1 million viewers for Notre Dame's home opener against Rice, down from 2.5 million viewers for the opener against Temple last season.

LABOR DAY MONDAY PRIMETIME COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME AUDIENCE TREND
YEAR
MATCHUP
NET
RATING
VIEWERS (000)
'14
Miami-Louisville
ESPN
2.3
3,609
'13
Florida State-Pittsburgh
ESPN
2.9
4,465
'12
Georgia Tech-Virginia Tech
ESPN
2.4
4,119
'11
Miami-Maryland
ESPN
2.9
4,395
'10
Boise State-Virginia Tech
ESPN
6.3
9,888
'09
Miami-Florida State
ESPN
5.1
8,406
'08
Tennessee-UCLA
ESPN
4.1
6,240
'07
Florida State-Clemson
ESPN
4.3
n/a
'06
Florida State-Miami
ESPN
5.7
n/a
'05
Miami-Florida State
ABC
6.5
9,665
         

CIRCLE OF LIFE: Despite the return of Tony Stewart to the track for the first time since his dirt track accident in August, the NASCAR Sprint Cup race on Labor Day weekend had its lowest viewership in a decade. ESPN averaged 5.21 million viewers for the race from Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday night, down 2% from 5.32 million viewers last year. While viewership was down for the race, the rating was flat compared to ’13.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND SUNDAY NIGHT NASCAR SPRINT CUP RACE AUDIENCE TREND
YEAR
TRACK
NET
RATING
VIEWERS (000)
'14
Atlanta
ESPN
3.2
5,210
'13
Atlanta
ESPN
3.2
5,323
'12
Atlanta
ESPN
3.4
5,558
'11
Atlanta
rained out, ran on a Tuesday
'10
Atlanta
ESPN
3.4
5,517
'09
Atlanta
ESPN
3.5
5,808
'08
Fontana
ESPN
3.3
5,638
'07
Fontana
ESPN
3.7
6,380
'06
Fontana
NBC
5.1
8,449
'05
Fontana
NBC
5.2
n/a
         

The charts below lists final ratings from recent sports telecasts.

TELECAST
DATE
NET
TIME (ET)
RAT.
VIEWERS
(000)
College Football: (regional)
8/30
ABC
3:30-7:00pm
4.0
6,401
College Football: Florida State-Oklahoma State
8/30
ABC
8:07-11:53pm
3.8
6,028
PGA Tour Deutsche Bank Championship: Third Round
8/31
NBC
3:00-6:00pm
1.5
2,200
College Football: Rice-Notre Dame
8/30
NBC
3:30-6:45pm
1.3
2,100
College Football: Fresno State-USC
8/30
Fox
7:36-10:53pm
0.8
1,348
U.S. Open: Men's, Women's Third Round
8/30
CBS
11:00am-5:59pm
0.9
1,266
U.S. Open: Men's Third, Women's Fourth Round
8/31
CBS
11:00am-4:41pm
1.2
1,266
"College Football Countdown"
8/30
ABC
3:00-3:30pm
0.8
1,161
Liga MX: Club America-UNAM Pumas
8/30
Univision
5:55-8:02pm
0.5
982
EPL: Chelsea-Everton
8/30
NBC
12:30-2:30pm
0.6
960
Diamond League Track & Field
8/31
NBC
1:30-2:30pm
0.6
915
Liga MX: Chivas de Guadalajara-Cruz Azul
8/31
UniMas
5:50-8:06pm
0.5
872
"World of X Games: 20 Years, 20 Firsts"
8/31
ABC
2:30-3:30pm
0.5
851
WNBA Western Conference Finals:
Mercury-Lynx: Game 2
8/31
ABC
3:30-5:45pm
0.6
828
"Notre Dame Pre-Game"
8/30
NBC
3:00-3:30pm
0.6
826
"Road to the Ryder Cup"
8/31
NBC
2:30-3:00pm
0.5
764
Youth Olympic Games
8/31
NBC
12:30-1:30pm
0.5
588
TELECAST
DATE
NET
TIME (ET)
RAT.
VIEWERS
(000)
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Oral-B 500 (Atlanta)
8/31
ESPN
7:30pm-12:00am
3.2
5,210
College Football: LSU-Wisconsin
8/30
ESPN
9:15pm-12:44am
2.8
4,678
College Football: Clemson-Georgia
8/30
ESPN
5:30-9:15pm
2.3
3,952
College Football: UCLA-Virginia
8/30
ESPN
12:00-3:24pm
1.9
2,918
"NASCAR Countdown"
8/31
ESPN
7:00-7:30pm
1.7
2,669
College Football: Boise State-Ole Miss
8/28
ESPN
7:53-11:28pm
1.5
2,418
NASCAR Nationwide Series:
Great Clips 300 (Atlanta)
8/30
ESPN2
7:30-10:15pm
1.0
1,541
"College GameDay"
8/30
ESPN
9:00am-12:00pm
1.0
1,537
FIBA World Cup of Basketball: U.S.-Finland
8/31
ESPN
3:28-5:23pm
0.9
1,317
College Football: Appalachian State-Michigan
8/30
ESPN2
12:00-3:18pm
0.9
1,293

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