Can College Football Playoff Maintain Ratings Momentum?

The College Football Playoff is gearing up for its semifinal matchups this week, with the expanded postseason’s inaugural TV ratings in the national spotlight.

With 12 teams making up this year’s bracket, the first-ever CFP quarterfinals averaged 16.9 million viewers on ESPN platforms, after an average audience of 10.6 million tuned in to the debut of first-round Playoff games across ESPN and TNT Sports platforms. So far, all eight CFP games combined have averaged 13.75 million viewers.

Next up, ESPN will apply its traditional “MegaCast” approach to Notre Dame–Penn State in the Orange Bowl on Thursday night, and Ohio State–Texas in the Cotton Bowl on Friday night. Those games will be looking to match or surpass last year’s CFP semifinals, which averaged 23.2 million viewers for ESPN. 

Last year’s matchups were played on New Year’s Day, with the Michigan-Alabama Rose Bowl drawing 27.7 million viewers. That was higher than the audience of 25 million who tuned in to the Michigan-Washington national championship game.

Ready for Kickoff

The Orange Bowl is going ahead as originally scheduled, despite a request from SEC commissioner Greg Sankey to have the CFP semifinal games flipped, due to the Sugar Bowl’s one-day delay to Jan. 2. Sankey felt that Notre Dame, which beat SEC champion Georgia last week, would have a disadvantage, since Penn State ended up with two extra days of rest, having beaten Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve.

For Notre Dame, another $6 million in bonus money is on the line, as the Fighting Irish get to keep 100% of the CFP revenue distribution they earn as an independent university, as opposed to other schools whose conference receive said bonus money, and distribute it to all their members.

Notre Dame has already earned $14 million thus far—the same amount Penn State and Ohio State have each earned for the Big Ten, and Texas has netted for the SEC.