The National Championship game between Alabama and Clemson easily won the night in Orlando as it doubled the viewers of its competition with 362,501 viewers. That made it the most watched College Football game of the season in Orlando edging out the November 28th Florida State-Florida game.
Despite the close game, The Alabama-Clemson viewers were significantly down compared to last year’s Ohio State-Oregon game which garnered 440,745 viewers in Orlando according to Nielsen. Keep in mind that Ohio State’s head coach, Urban Meyer, was the Florida Gators head coach which could be part of the reason for the big numbers with Ohio State.
Its the second year in a row though the National Championship Game viewers in Orlando was down as the Ohio State-Oregon numbers were down from the previous year’s BCS National title game between Florida State and Auburn which garnered a 24.9 local rating in Orlando which was the fifth best TV market to watch the title game and is the most watched college football game of all time in Orlando dating back to 2000.
Despite the numbers being down, The National Championship Game dominated viewers in Orlando as a rerun of Big Bang Theory rerun at 8 p.m. on CBS with 130,967 viewers was a distant second in viewers in Orlando. A repeat of CBS’s Scorpion was thirdwith 119,154, followed by NBC’s new comedy Superstore with 91,437 and a Big Bang Theory repeat at 8:30 p.m. on CBS with 90,502.
ESPN ran The Megacast broadcast as the National Championship Game was shown across eight TV channels and streamed on the ESPN app.
ESPN2’s Coaches Room version of the National Title game, which featured Florida Gators coach Jim McElwain and former Gators coach and current South Carolina coach Will Muschamp, garnered 6,681 viewers in Orlando.
The ESPNU Broadcast version of the National Championship Game, which was the “homer” broadcast, had 4,055 viewers, while the ESPN Deportes version had 1,367 viewers.
ESPN noted that SEC Network, ESPNews, ESPN Classic and ESPN Goal Line are not Nielsen-rated networks.
