NEW YORK—Nielsen said it has started releasing rankings of the most-watched college football teams. In its first ranking, through the first 10 weeks of the season, Alabama is on top with 7.910 million viewers, followed by Georgia with 7.626 million viewers.
Nielsen also reported that through 10 weeks, college football viewership is up 4% from last year, comparing Big Data Plus Panel numbers to last year’s Big Data Plus Panel numbers from the same time period.
The Top 10 ranking showcases the teams with the highest viewership thus far this season, across ABC, Big Ten Network, CBS, The CW, the ESPN networks, Fox, FS1, FS2, NBC and TNT.
Those teams were:
The overall popularity of college football was also highlighted in a separate Nielsen ranking of the top 25 live sports events. College football secured 10 of the top 25 slots for live sports for the week of October 27 - November 2.
During that week, the World Series delivered five of the top 11 spots, including the No. 2 and No. 4 ranked telecasts (Fox). Game 7 (ranked No. 2) delivered 26.9 million viewers, the most for a World Series game since 2017.
From Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, NFL football secured seven of the top 14 slots across six different networks/distributors: Fox, NBC, CBS, Prime Video, ABC, and ESPN. The most-watched NFL games aired in the CBS late window. Nearly 31 million viewers tuned in for the Nov. 2 Kansas City Chiefs-Buffalo Bills in the late window, making it the most-watched Week 9 game on CBS since 2007.
