Week 7 TV Ratings

MCMLXXX · October 19, 2023

College football TV ratings 2023 - Sports Media Watch

Would like to match those Memphis vs. Tulane numbers this week but we are on ESPN 2.

Edited October 19, 2023 by MCMLXXX

GreenDave · October 19, 2023

That Tulane vs Memphis game was watched by 1.72 million viewers. Thats 3.5x the next highest viewed G5 game of week 7. The Tulane vs UNT game would do well to get 600k on a Saturday afternoon on The Deuce

GMG_Dallas · October 19, 2023

6 hours ago, GreenDave said:

That Tulane vs Memphis game was watched by 1.72 million viewers. Thats 3.5x the next highest viewed G5 game of week 7. The Tulane vs UNT game would do well to get 600k on a Saturday afternoon on The Deuce

Tulane vs Memphis was also at 6 pm on a Friday with only Utah State vs Fresno State to compete with which started at 7. No playoff baseball this past Friday either. Tulane vs North Texas is at the same time as #17 Tennessee vs #11 Alabama. 600k this Saturday would be great.

DentonStang · October 19, 2023

Viewers is largely driven by channel and time outside the top handful of schools. No reason to read much into it

GreenDave · October 19, 2023

40 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

Tulane vs Memphis was also at 6 pm on a Friday with only Utah State vs Fresno State to compete with which started at 7. No playoff baseball this past Friday either. Tulane vs North Texas is at the same time as #17 Tennessee vs #11 Alabama. 600k this Saturday would be great.

I agree. Those factors all helped the ratings in a big way. It was also likely the marquis matchup in the C-USAAC regular season as UTSA isn't as good as expected. We shall see.

But you may not know that Tulane has had very good ratings for a while now, and they outdrew USC fans 2 to 1 at the Cotton Bowl. Those metrics mean a lot for a possible PEE invite. Tulane wants to get out of the C-USAAC as badly as it wanted out of C-USA, and a second G5 Championship and NY6 Bowl game would be a HUGE step in that direction.

Be happy playing Tulane puts UNT on the Deuce this week. The only Tulane game banished to ESPN+ this season will be their FCS opponent, Nichols. 1 game on The U, the rest have been on The Deuce or ESPN.

Edited October 19, 2023 by GreenDave

GMG_Dallas · October 19, 2023

54 minutes ago, GreenDave said:

I agree. Those factors all helped the ratings in a big way. It was also likely the marquis matchup in the C-USAAC regular season as UTSA isn't as good as expected. We shall see.

But you may not know that Tulane has had very good ratings for a while now, and they outdrew USC fans 2 to 1 at the Cotton Bowl. Those metrics mean a lot for a possible PEE invite. Tulane wants to get out of the C-USAAC as badly as it wanted out of C-USA, and a second G5 Championship and NY6 Bowl game would be a HUGE step in that direction.

Be happy playing Tulane puts UNT on the Deuce this week. The only Tulane game banished to ESPN+ this season will be their FCS opponent, Nichols. 1 game on The U, the rest have been on The Deuce or ESPN.

Tulane is also the only FBS program in New Orleans. You're going to attract more eyeballs being the only college show in town.

Regarding the bolded part, Tulane isn't special. Tulane isn't edgy or unique in thinking they're above their situation. Everybody wants out of their conference or at least would entertain other options with the exception of B10 and SEC schools. Congrats, Tulane fans. You're exactly like the fans of about 110 other FBS schools.

NorthTexasWeLove · October 19, 2023

6 hours ago, DentonStang said:

Viewers is largely driven by channel and time outside the top handful of schools. No reason to read much into it

It's everything to read into. I know TV money doesn't mean anything to smug people, but it's a large part of operating budgets around the US. TV revenue/deals for conferences are dictated by viewership.

DentonLurker · October 19, 2023

6 hours ago, DentonStang said:

Viewers is largely driven by channel and time outside the top handful of schools. No reason to read much into it

Yeah right… it’s more that channel is driven by expected viewership. If the networks don’t think people will watch, you move down a level. And more often than not, if you ultimately polled fans, the decisions would be the same.

TIgreen01 · October 19, 2023

7 hours ago, GreenDave said:

I agree. Those factors all helped the ratings in a big way. It was also likely the marquis matchup in the C-USAAC regular season as UTSA isn't as good as expected. We shall see.

But you may not know that Tulane has had very good ratings for a while now, and they outdrew USC fans 2 to 1 at the Cotton Bowl. Those metrics mean a lot for a possible PEE invite. Tulane wants to get out of the C-USAAC as badly as it wanted out of C-USA, and a second G5 Championship and NY6 Bowl game would be a HUGE step in that direction.

Be happy playing Tulane puts UNT on the Deuce this week. The only Tulane game banished to ESPN+ this season will be their FCS opponent, Nichols. 1 game on The U, the rest have been on The Deuce or ESPN.

Note to self, Tulane fans ~= schmoo fans. Great. Awesome. We need more of these guys around like I need a fork in the eye.

DentonStang · October 20, 2023

15 hours ago, DentonLurker said:

Yeah right… it’s more that channel is driven by expected viewership. If the networks don’t think people will watch, you move down a level. And more often than not, if you ultimately polled fans, the decisions would be the same.

Sure, on a macro level. Ohio State is not getting stuck on a crappy channel because they are a huge draw and SMU is not drawing what they drew no matter the channel. Nobody would debate that.

But look at the same teams playing every week on different channels. You're going to have a lot less viewers on ESPNU than main ESPN. You can lump all teams into a few buckets of viewership, and everyone on the same bucket will get wildly varying viewership, but due to channel/time not individual team. You can pretty much put all G5 in one bucket.

I'll highlight some bad SMU numbers to demonstrate.

Week 5 SMU vs Charlotte

18k viewers on ESPNU. Wow. Nobody watched this game.

Week 7 SMU vs ECU

467k viewers on ESPN.

Since nobody watched the week 5 SMU game, I guess ECU was responsible for 440k viewers then?

Then where were those ECU fans for ECU vs Marshall which only had 90k viewers on....you guessed it..... ESPNU.

This doesn't even consider timeslot either.

You can do the same thing with upper confidence teams too. Look at B12 games on Fox vs FS1 or B10 games on ABC vs any other channel.

Edited October 20, 2023 by DentonStang

UNTLifer · October 20, 2023

2 hours ago, DentonStang said:

Since nobody watched the week 5 SMU game, I guess ECU was responsible for 440k viewers then?

Yes

NT80 · October 20, 2023

22 hours ago, NorthTexasWeLove said:

It's everything to read into. I know TV money doesn't mean anything to smug people, but it's a large part of operating budgets around the US. TV revenue/deals for conferences are dictated by viewership.

It's almost to the point of over-saturation of live college sports now, with both linear and streaming. It's not just college football viewership competing with itself, but now you can get most minor college sports live on ESPN+ (volleyball, soccer, lacrosse, etc).

Combined with NFL games, there was live football on linear TV every night this week. Plus with MLB baseball playoffs and NBA preseason it's no wonder actual college game attendance has declined at smaller programs, and less viewership for lessor programs on broadcast games. Do I watch Rangers/Astros or JMU/Marshall or Rice/Tulsa? Sports overload.

NorthTexasWeLove · October 20, 2023

9 minutes ago, NT80 said:

It's almost to the point of over-saturation of live college sports now, with both linear and streaming. It's not just college football viewership competing with itself, but now you can get most minor college sports live on ESPN+ (volleyball, soccer, lacrosse, etc).

Combined with NFL games, there was live football on linear TV every night this week. Plus with MLB baseball playoffs and NBA preseason it's no wonder actual college game attendance has declined at smaller programs, and less viewership for lessor programs on broadcast games. Do I watch Rangers/Astros or JMU/Marshall or Rice/Tulsa? Sports overload.

We had 37k viewers on TV for our last game. We hardly sold-out our stadium on TV. Sure, there is market saturation. But it's still a huge variable during negotiating conference media deals. 37k is laughable due to its sadness.

NT80 · October 20, 2023

8 minutes ago, NorthTexasWeLove said:

We had 37k viewers on TV for our last game. We hardly sold-out our stadium on TV. Sure, there is market saturation. But it's still a huge variable during negotiating conference media deals. 37k is laughable due to its sadness.

37K viewers is still better than if our game was only on ESPN+. It's National marketing for the program, and that's always a good thing vs not having it broadcast on linear TV.