SEC-Led College Football TV Ratings Are Still Up 4% Through Week 9

As college football enters the final month of its regular season, the sport’s TV ratings are staying hot—just not quite as hot as they were to start the season.

Through Week 9’s games, total college football viewership is up 4% compared to the first nine weeks of the 2024 season. The average game audience is 1.95 million viewers, compared to 1.87 million last year.

While still up from 2024, college football TV ratings have fallen slightly from the impressive pace they were trending after Week 5, when the average game audience was 2.1 million viewers, up 10.5% from 1.9 million through the first five weeks a season ago.

All the numbers above take into account Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measurement process, which was available last year but did not become the standard reporting method until September. 

This season, more younger viewers are tuning in to college football action, with ratings in the ages 18–34 demographic up 9% so far.

Fox has the most-watched game of the season, 16.62 million viewers for Texas–Ohio State, and ABC is on pace for its best college football season on record, averaging 7.1 million viewers per game. ESPN networks are averaging 2.3 million viewers per game, up 20% from last season.

The Top 10

Through Week 9, SEC programs account for 9 of the 10 most-watched teams this season, with Ohio State the lone Big Ten representative, according to average viewers per game:

• Alabama: 7.91 million
• Tennessee: 7.8 million
• Georgia: 7.6 million
• Texas: 6.88 million
• Oklahoma: 6.34 million
• LSU: 6.24 million
• Ohio State: 6.11 million
• Ole Miss: 5.19 million
• Florida: 5.15 million
• South Carolina: 5.04 million

The Battle for Noon

While ABC’s weekly SEC slate has helped the network dominate the 3:30 p.m. ET and 7:30 p.m. ET broadcast windows, Fox is still winning the noon time slot, with its Big Noon Saturday matchups averaging 5.4 million viewers.

However, ABC’s noon audiences are not far behind, averaging 4.5 million viewers. ABC has actually won the noon window five out of the nine weeks so far.

This Saturday, Fox has Penn State at No. 1 Ohio State at noon, a matchup that has lost juice since the Nittany Lions, ranked No. 2 in the preseason AP Top 25 poll, are now 3–4 and have also fired head coach James Franklin. ABC has No. 9 Vanderbilt at No. 20 Texas at noon.

Fox still has “The Game”—the coveted Ohio State–Michigan rivalry—on tap for Thanksgiving weekend, which is annually one of its most-watched games of the year. Last season, the network’s Big Noon Saturday window averaged 5.58 million viewers.