CFB TV Ratings Stay Hot As Georgia-Tennessee Sets ABC High of 12.6M

Georgia’s 44–41 overtime victory over Tennessee was the most-watched Week 3 college football game and ABC’s largest audience of the season, drawing 12.6 million viewers Saturday.

It’s the second-most-watched game of the season so far, behind only the 16.62 million people who watched Ohio State’s 14–7 victory over Texas on Fox in Week 1. The contest also marked ABC’s highest college football TV rating in the 3:30 p.m. ET broadcast window since 2006, showcasing the value of the complete SEC package that Disney took over from CBS last year. 

ABC is off to its best three-week start on record, with CFB games on the network averaging 7.8 million viewers, up 41% from the same period last season. 

Georgia-Tennessee was the fourth game on ABC to draw more than 10 million viewers, following a trio of Week 1 matchups each topping eight figures. ABC had four games with an audience of 10 million or more for the entire 2024 regular season.

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LSU’s 20–10 win over Florida was the second-most-watched game of Week 3, drawing 7.6 million viewers in primetime on ABC. Third was Texas A&M’s 41–40 victory at Notre Dame, which drew 6.2 million viewers on NBC, also on Saturday night.

Miami’s 49–12 blowout win over South Florida (which suffered a 102-minute weather delay) did not deliver a record rating for The CW, as some expected it could, with the Hurricanes entering the game ranked No. 5 and the Bulls No. 18. The network drew 720,000 viewers, which marks its fifth-largest CFB audience since entering the sport in 2023. The CW’s most-watched game on record remains a Florida State–North Alabama matchup that drew 1.33 million viewers in November 2023.

College football ratings across all networks were up 21% through two weeks; final figures for the entire Week 3 slate are not yet available.