Georgia Bulldogs' Thumping of Florida Gators Draws Another Big Audience
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ATHENS - For the fourth year in a row more than six million viewers watched the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.
This time the No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs’ win over the Florida Gators had 6,120,000 million viewers. 2018 (6.35M), 2019 (6.98M) and 2020 (6.43M) and this year’s game have been the best four-year run in the history of the series on TV.
FOX’s Michigan State-Michigan won the weekend with 9.289M viewers - making it the most-watched game of the college football season so far. The most-watched game previously was Georgia’s season-opening win over Clemson on ABC. That network had the No. 2 game of the weekend with Saturday night’s Ohio State-Penn State at 7.05M.
Three of those four Big Ten teams are considered marquee TV properties in college football along with the Bulldogs, Alabama and Notre Dame. Georgia’s blowout over the Gators didn’t help keep TV sets on, but UGA-UF peaked with 7,909,000 viewers during the game according to insiders with knowledge of the situation.
Only two other times in the history of the series has UGA-UF delivered over 6M viewers - in 2009 when No. 1 Florida blew out the Dawgs, and in the 2012 classic decided late between the No. 2 Gators and No. 12 Dawgs.
Three of the last four games between the Dawgs and Gators have featured top-ten matchups. Georgia has been ranked coming into all of the last five games.
Saturday’s game is the 18th most-watched game in Kirby Smart’s tenure at Georgia. It is the 18th time the Dawgs have drawn more than six million viewers since 2016. Georgia has drawn more than one million viewers on TV 55 times since 2016.
CBS selected the Bulldogs’ game at Tennessee on Monday. It is the final game the network can broadcast of UGA this regular season. ESPN will show this weekend’s game with Missouri. The Charleston Southern game will be shown exclusively online through ESPN - it will not be available on broadcast on cable TV.
Disney has the rights to Georgia’s final contest at Mark Richt Field at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. A week later UGA will face an SEC West foe in Atlanta for the 2021 SEC Championship Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. CBS will broadcast that game.
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