Week 1 Games Deliver Strong Audience Gains For College Football TV Partners

ESPN, ABC and ESPNU for 16 games during Week 1 of the college football season saw a 21% increase in viewership compared to Week 1 last year, when 17 games aired on the nets, plus ESPN2, which this year aired U.S. Open coverage on Saturday. The flagship ESPN channel aired eight games, averaging 3.36 million viewers, up 27% from seven games last year. ESPN was boosted by Ohio State-Virginia Tech on Labor Day, as the Monday night game drew 10.56 million viewers. That figure is ESPN/ABC’s best ever audience for a Week 1 game and ESPN’s third-best audience for any regular-season college football game (ABC's records date back to '96 and ESPN back to '90). Ohio State-Virginia Tech also had 708,000 unique streams on WatchESPN, marking a new record for a college football game. The game led into the new Scott Van Pelt-helmed “SportsCenter,” and the midnight-slotted show’s debut averaged 2.16 million viewers from 11:30pm-1:00am ET. Meanwhile, ESPN’s opening Thursday night games were up, while Michigan-Utah set a college football record for FS1.

GREEN INITIATIVE: NBC on Saturday night drew 4.1 million viewers for Notre Dame’s 38-3 win over Texas, marking the net’s best football opener since Penn State-Notre Dame drew 6.9 million viewers in ’06. This was the first time on record that a Notre Dame football opener aired in primetime on NBC. Compared to NBC’s Notre Dame primetime average from ’09-14, which consisted of many Michigan and USC matchups, Texas-Notre Dame was up 14%. Last year’s 3:30pm opener against Rice drew 2.1 million viewers, while the Temple opener in ’13 drew 2.5 million. Austin led all markets on Saturday with a 15.7 local rating, followed by San Antonio (6.5) and Indianapolis (6.2).

NOTE: * = After two weather delays, the game finished on Versus (now NBCSN) from 9:19-9:41pm.