Ohio State’s 34-23 victory over Notre Dame in Monday night’s national championship game was the most-watched game of the 2024 college football season. However, it was also a double-digit drop in viewers from last year’s College Football Playoff final.
ESPN announced Wednesday that the Buckeyes’ second national championship victory in the CFP era — they first won it all to cap the 2014 season, when the Football Bowl Subdivision’s playoff debuted with the four-team format it retained until this season’s expansion to 12 teams — averaged 22.1 million viewers. That makes it the most-watched sporting event outside of the NFL over the past year, but it also represents a 12% drop from the 25 million who tuned in for Michigan’s 34-13 victory over Washington to win the CFP title game in January 2024.
Monday’s number was also the third-lowest audience of the 11 CFP title games to date, with all three of the lowest occurring in the past five years. The audience peaked at 26.1 million viewers during the second quarter (8:30 to 8:45 p.m. Eastern), when the game was tied at 7.
Since Alabama’s 26-23 overtime victory against Georgia in January 2018, the past seven title games have had an average margin of victory of 25.4 points. Ohio State held a 31-7 lead midway through the third quarter before Notre Dame rallied to get within one possession with five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
Georgia’s 65-7 rout of TCU in 2023 was the least-viewed title game (17.2 million) followed by Alabama’s 52-24 win over Ohio State in 2021 (18.7 million). The first title game in 2015 — the Buckeyes’ 42-20 victory over Oregon — remains the most-watched college football game by viewers in the CFP era, according to Nielsen, at 33.9 million.