Fox’s Friday Night College Football Experiment Off to Strong Start

Fox’s attempt to take over another college football TV window on Friday nights is off to a nice start.

Kansas State’s 31–7 victory over Arizona last week averaged 2.58 million viewers, kicking off a 12-game Friday prime-time slate on the main Fox network channel, featuring schools from the Big Ten, Big 12, and Mountain West.

Fox is using college football to replace WWE SmackDown, which is moving to USA Network thanks to a five-year, $1.4 billion deal. In a comparable window last fall on Sept. 15, 2023, also the second Friday after Labor Day, SmackDown drew 2.57 million viewers on Fox—just barely below KSU-Arizona. That was the highest Friday WWE audience for Fox for the remainder of the year.

Ahead of the Friday package of games, Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill predicted college football would do equal, if not better, viewership numbers than professional wrestling, in an interview with Front Office Sports. And with game windows of three-plus hours, compared to two-hour SmackDown broadcasts, the network’s expectations are high.

Friday Night Lights

This week, Fox gets a second straight matchup between ranked opponents for its next Friday prime-time showcase, after KSU and Arizona entered last week’s game ranked No. 14 and No. 20, respectively (KSU has since moved up to No. 14 and Arizona fell out of the top 25).

Here are the next three Friday night games on Fox:

• Sept. 20: No. 24 Illinois at No. 22 Nebraska
• Sept. 27: Washington at Rutgers
• Oct. 4: Michigan State at No. 9 Oregon

Rolling Effect

Fox also got a rare opportunity to broadcast an Alabama game this past weekend. The Crimson Tide’s 42–10 victory at Wisconsin drew 5.02 million viewers in the network’s Big Noon Saturday window. That followed a massive audience of 9.35 million for Texas’s 31–12 win at Michigan the previous Saturday.