UGA-Vandy: No. 1 Saturday TV Game on Cable

ATHENS - No. 3 Georgia’s 30-6 win over Vanderbilt was the No. 1 college football game on cable this past Saturday. 

The Bulldogs and Vanderbilt were slated to be on the SEC Network, which does not collect viewership numbers. Instead, the Dawgs were thrust into primetime after the FSU-Boise game was moved to a noon kick. 

1,822,000 viewers watched UGA overpower Vanderbilt. It was the No. 8 overall college football game of opening weekend, and the No. 2 cable game of opening weekend behind only Notre Dame-Louisville, which had an exclusive time slot on Monday night and pulled in over 5.6 million viewers. 

Still, the power of the Bulldogs’ TV pull was on full display as the UGA-Vandy game was up 81% over last year’s Saturday prime-time on ESPN game (UCLA-Cincinnati, 2018). However, UGA-Vandy was down slightly from the last time the game was rated. That was a noon ESPN telecast in 2017 (1,958,000). The largest UGA-Vandy audience of all time came in 2015 when CBS broadcast the game in week two and drew 2,571,000 viewers.