LSU vs. Florida Was ESPN’s Most-Watched College Football Game In Nearly Two Years

ESPN announced Tuesday that the LSU-Florida game on Saturday night in Tiger Stadium was the networks most-watch College Football game in nearly two years.

The telecast averaged 6,450,000 viewers and the audience peaked at 7,428,000 viewers in the second half. Per ESPN:

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ESPN’s presentation of a Baton Rouge Saturday night featuring Florida at LSU drove the network to multi-year college football viewership highs, resulted in the most-watched sporting event on Saturday night and led to another primetime victory among all networks. Simultaneously, ABC was generating broadcast television’s largest college football audience among primetime games. The significant viewership numbers helped complete a day which began with College GameDay Built by The Home Depot increasing its audience year-over-year and the sport’s biggest upset of the season resulting in ESPN delivering one of cable’s most-watched noon game windows in recent history.

Florida at LSU Stands Out in the Record Books

ESPN’s Saturday Night telecast of the Gators-Tigers (8 p.m. ET) averaged 6,450,000 viewers, ESPN’s most-watched game in nearly two years – including standalone, Labor Day night telecasts and this season’s Week 0 coverage. For October games, the audience was among ESPN’s five best on record, dating back to 1994. Additional highlights:

-Second Half Surge: The audience peaked at 7,428,000 viewers in the second half (10:45-11 p.m.).

-Significant Growth: ESPN was up 70% year-over-year from last year’s similar window (Missouri at Alabama).

-Leading the Way in the SEC: Gators-Tigers was the most-watched SEC game of Week 7 among all networks.

-Tigers Win on the Field, ESPN Wins in Television: In addition to being the most-watched primetime football game, the audience was the best among all sports on Saturday night. The result was ESPN “Winning the Night” among viewers and all key male, adult, and female demos.

---Combining Week 0 (Aug. 24), ESPN’s networks have ‘Won the Night’ seven of the last eight Saturday nights.

---Factoring in the entire five-day Kickoff Weekend (Aug. 29 – Sept. 2), college football has led ESPN’s nets to “Win the Night” nine times this season.

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