Colorado’s 43-35 double-overtime victory over Colorado State on Saturday was ESPN’s most-watched game in late primetime. Here’s what you need to know:
- The game, which began at 10 p.m. ET, drew 9.3 million viewers, the network reported. It peaked at 11.1 million viewers between 11:00 PM and 11:15 PM ET.
- Colorado vs. Colorado State was ESPN’s most streamed college football regular season game of all time and ESPN/ABC’s fourth-best regular season game (excluding conference championships) over the last six years.
- Colorado State led 28-20 with just over two minutes left in regulation, but Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders led a seven-play touchdown drive and successful two-point conversion to send it into overtime. Sanders then threw two touchdown passes to Mikey Harrison in overtime for the win.
- No. 19 Colorado enters Saturday’s matchup with No. 10 Oregon 3-0. The Buffaloes will be without star receiver and defensive back Travis Hunter, who was illegally hit by Colorado State safety Henry Blackburn during the first quarter of the game and is expected to miss several weeks.
Athletic’s instant analysis:
Makes sense of the wild viewership numbers
The number 9.3 million is simply staggering. A typical Pac-12 night game on ESPN approaches a million viewers. Also, it’s not like Colorado is playing USC. He faced a Mountain West team.
It speaks to the greatness of the Deion Sanders story. There’s no way to quantify it, but I can imagine that many of the people who tuned in to this game have never seen a Colorado football game in their lives and may not even be regular college football fans. The Hollywood and celebrity component of Colorado football has drawn a much wider audience. — Almond
Colorado is becoming event programming
The Colorado Football content machine continues to help all sports media — including Athletic. But no one benefits more than ESPN and Fox. Not only was Colorado-Colorado State the most-watched college football game by about four million viewers (Georgia-South Carolina averaged 5.4 million viewers on CBS), but the game drew an almost unheard-of number for a college football game starting in such a late window of the year.
Mike Mulvihill, president of Insight and Analytics for Fox Sports, said he’s not sure there’s ever been a live sporting event that started after 10 p.m. ET and attracted a bigger audience. “Mayweather-Pacquaio PPV maybe, but you can’t prove it,” he wrote on X. Both “College GameDay” and Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff” were in Boulder last Saturday, and Fox’s pregame show has centered around Colorado for the first three weeks. your season.
Colorado has become event programming for the networks on game day and multimedia content between those games. At some point, that enthusiasm will wane, but Deion Sanders and Co. has already helped pay a lot of the bills for sports media giants — Dietsch
Required reading
(Photo by Ron Chenoy/USA Today)
