Report: CFB Ratings Down for 2017, and Oklahoma State’s Most-Watched Game Will Surprise You

I might be alone on the good ships PPD and overnight TV ratings, but should be important to those of you who care about the nuance of this great sport. Obviously, I have covered PPD to death, but I’ve been wanting to take a closer look at TV ratings for this past season.

Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated gave us a great window into the ratings for college football in 2017, and at the outset, it ain’t pretty. Here are the numbers the person he interviewed for his ratings piece, Austin Karp of Sports Business Daily, came up with.

Update: A previous version of this post said FOX was down 23 percent. It was actually up 23 percent.

It looks bad, and it is in some ways. However, those FOX and FS1 numbers stick out, and Karp notes that there is a reason for the overall decline that should encourage CFB fans.

There were some really exciting matchups and Fox Sports really stepped up their game this year—the company’s first with the Big Ten regular season lineup. You could often find three college football windows on the Fox broadcast window this season, which never happened before.

With a healthy dose on FS1, they are making themselves a destination for college football now. But this is a zero-sum game, particularly as it relates to the Power Five conferences. Fox Sports’ gain was ABC/ESPN’s loss, as the new Big Ten contracts meant Bristol had fewer options with regard to top teams. [SI]

The zero-sum game resonates with me. There are more channels showing football than ever before, and if you’re not increasing the pie (viewership) then it makes sense that all but a few of those channels would see a decline.

Furthermore, we have to consider the rise in streaming. I didn’t watch a single Oklahoma State game this year on a traditional TV. Why? I purchased YouTube TV where I can rewind and fast-forward so I can cut videos and GIFs in real time. The future is now the present.

Anyway, I thought all that was interesting. Here are the most-watched games of the year (according to Karp) and the ratings for every Oklahoma State game this year (according to Sports Media Watch).

Here are the OSU numbers (not sure why it doesn’t include WVU).

That Bedlam number is confounding, right? Well, here’s the thing. It was actually the highest-rated FS1 game all year. Only Ohio State-Nebraska came close at 2.4M viewers and all but a handful didn’t even come close to cracking the 2M barrier. That’s what happens when you put games on FS1. (cc: Big 12).