Georgia Bulldogs' Destruction of South Carolina Gamecocks Watched by 3 Million
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ATHENS - The No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs’ lopsided win over South Carolina was watched by three million viewers on Saturday.
That’s more than double the amount of people that watched South Carolina lose to Arkansas last week on ESPN at the same exact time. Georgia’s win over South Carolina was up nearly half a million viewers from last year’s primetime affair in Athens, which was a primetime game on ESPN.
UGA-USC is the most-watched game on cable this fall at the Noon time slot. It is this season’s No. 4 overall game that kicked off at noon behind only Alabama-Texas (FOX, 10.6 M), Colorado State-Michigan (ABC, 3.9 M) and Oklahoma-Nebraska (FOX, 3.4 M).
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So far this season the Dawgs have played in the No. 4 and No. 18 most-watched games of the early season (that’s out of 83 total games rated in the first three weeks of the year).
Still, Georgia-USC was only the ninth most-watched game between the two schools since 2005. South Carolina’s slip on the regional scene has cost the series in terms of viewership. From 2011 to 2014, games between the Chickens and Dawgs averaged nearly 5.5 million viewers. Since then, however, the game has slipped - failing to record viewership over four million for any contest.
Nonetheless, UGA-USC beat out UConn-Michigan, which was on ABC, Purdue-Syracuse and the Big Ten Network’s offering at noon. Only old foes Oklahoma and Nebraska beat out Georgia in that time slot (FOX, 3.4 M).
Meanwhile, Birmingham led all markets with a 13.2 rating for the Georgia-USC game. Atlanta came in with a 9.3 share. Birmingham, like Atlanta for the Dawgs, is the home market for Alabama. The phenomenon, known as "hate watching", carried over for Birmingham later in the evening it was also No. 1 in market share for the Texas A&M-Miami game.
Alabama faces the Aggies on October 8th.
Most-watched Georgia-USC games
1. 2013 - 7,050,000 - ESPN
2. 2014 - 6,770,000 - CBS
3. 2011 - 3,949,000 - ESPN
4. 2018 - 3,747,000 - CBS
5. 2010 - 3,490,000 - ESPN2