Georgia's national championship blowout of TCU leads to record-low TV ratings
Georgia’s 65-7 dump-trucking of of TCU in Monday night’s national championship game finished off the 2022 season, but it also led to a record-low number of viewers.
ESPN announced that the game drew 17.2 million viewers, a record-low for the championship game in the College Football Playoff era. The game 2 years ago when Alabama beat Ohio State brought in 18.7 million and was the least-watched college football title game at the time since 2004.
Once Georgia built a big early lead, non-partisan fans around the country likely went to bed early. Georgia was up by 10 points at the end of the first quarter and the Bulldogs scored on 10 of their 12 possessions, as the game was hardly in doubt after the first quarter. That’s about the time when many viewers checked out.
Viewership peaked in the 8:30 p.m. quarter hour at 22.365 million viewers, but that’s when it plummeted quickly.
The 3-game @CFBPlayoff was up 9% year-over-year, averaging 20.6 million viewers across the @CFAPeachBowl, @Fiesta_Bowl & the #NationalChampionship
Monday night’s finale featuring @TCUFootball & @GeorgiaFootball registered 17.2 million viewers#CFBPlayoff ? by @ESPNImages pic.twitter.com/jJZWBv2377
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) January 10, 2023
TCU/Georgia CFP Championship quarter hours (sum of ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU):
8P ET: 20.33M
8:15: 21.85M
8:30: 22.365M
8:45: 22.18M
9:00: 20.795M
9:15: 16.226M
9:30: 15.885M
9:45: 16.24M
10:00P: 14.95M
10:15: 13.34M
10:30: 11.8M
10:45: 10.3M— Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) January 10, 2023
The problem is putting the game on a Monday night. Work with the NFL to have them play their two Saturday games at 1 and 4 and kick the title game at 7:30 or even 8 on Saturday would be fine.
The problem was 65-7. The NFL has no incentive to work with the playoff committee.
From what I’ve read, a majority of the nation didn’t want Georgia to win it. So it makes sense that the majority bailed watching TCU get completely dismembered…
They hate us cause the ain’t us. Go Dawgs!!!
If they don’t have a stake in the game, people love to root for the underdog. I get it.
If it was Ohio State vs TCU I would have been rooting for TCU. Besides, Duggan is an easy player to like and cheer for.
Oh please! Football watchers from other conferences don’t have a strong patriotism to any other conference!!!!! They simply have no mystery left to solve….. and it’s Monday night, they work the next day so the game ends later than they want to stay up. Even worse, a fair number of people don’t own TVs anymore or pay for cable, remember when all TV and all radio was free…. So these people go out to watch the game and eat dinner. No way are they taking up space in the restaurant after the game is decided. Shoot even the extra help gets sent home early. Really dumb idea to play the game outside the footprint of the two leagues and these two leagues have a 1000 mile plus border where the host city could have benefited. The FBS and FCS will probably merge into two complete knock out brackets. I hope they drug test the entire roster of both participants so we can be sure we are seeing a real fair contest. Lopsided contests can happen naturally often enough just because of luck or seasonal illnesses, or in this case semester breaks where some players are graduating and just getting on with their lives!
What a coincidence… it was also the worst beat-down of the CFP era. TCU wasn’t a draw. Take note networks… get it right committee!
Get the committee out of it. Are you kidding me? A half dozen League champs don’t get in but we have to see two from the most overrated conference of all time?
Isn’t it interesting that the Georgia will celebrate at the Corral…
Snaggle tooth buffoons…