UGA Football is America’s Most Watched College Football Team
NEW YORK - Nielsen today shared its first-ever college football conference champions and overall team rankings based on total season average viewership, with the University of Georgia ranking as the most-watched team of the 2024 regular season.
College football continues to be a significant draw across networks owned by Disney, Fox and NBCU, with football helping them rise in Nielsen’s Gauge and Media Distributor Gauge this fall. This season, over 154 billion minutes of college football have been watched live across Disney, FOX, NBCU and other networks.
Here are the conference champions for the 2024 season, based on average total viewership per game:
AAC: Army
ACC: Miami
Big 12: Colorado
Big Ten: Ohio State
Conference USA: UTEP
FBS Independent: Notre Dame
Mountain West: Colorado State
Pac 12: Oregon State
SEC: Georgia
Sun Belt: Marshall
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Here are the top 10 teams of the 2024 season (average total viewership per game):
University of Georgia (8.6 million viewers)
The Ohio State University (6.8 million viewers)
University of Alabama (6.6 million viewers)
University of Texas (6.4 million viewers)
University of Tennessee (5.4 million viewers)
University of Michigan (5.2 million viewers)
Texas A&M University (4.9 million viewers)
Louisiana State University (4.8 million viewers)
University of Kentucky (4.5 million viewers)
University of Florida (4.3 million viewers)
Georgia was boosted by its matchups against Alabama in week five (12 million viewers) and SEC newcomer Texas in week 8 (13 million viewers). The latter stands as the most-watched game of the regular season.
The Big Ten, which now boasts 18 teams, is typically not far behind the SEC in terms of audience interest. Thus, it’s no surprise to see Ohio State and Michigan in the top 10, at numbers 2 and 6, respectively. The two Big Ten teams’ top appearance came in week 14 when they faced one another, attracting 12 million viewers.
Methodology: All live college football telecasts were tracked across the 14 weeks of the regular season, but the team rankings were limited to schools who appeared in at least four televised games across networks. Because not all conference-specific networks are currently measured (e.g. SEC Network), all were excluded to keep comparisons equal. Audience averages for each game count for both teams involved, so for example, the Georgia and Texas game in week eight counted toward both Georgia and Texas’ averages for the season. All data is live + same day program data based on Nielsen’s panel.
About Nielsen
Nielsen is a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics. Through our understanding of people and their behaviors across all channels and platforms, we empower our clients with independent and actionable intelligence so they can connect and engage with their global audiences—now and into the future. Learn more at www.nielsen.com and connect with us on social media (X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram).