College football is back—and in a big way.
While recent changes to Nielsen’s ratings methodology were expected to help boost the fall football numbers, the 2025-26 season got off to a hotter start than anyone could have imagined. Fox’s Big Noon Saturday window, featuring defending champs Ohio State and a top-ranked Texas Longhorns squad helmed by Arch Manning, delivered the largest Week 1 audience on the books, averaging over 16.6 million viewers.
The audience figure reflects Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel ratings currency, which officially became the coin of the realm in time for the weekend football slate. While the enhanced method of counting the house and the ongoing expansion of Nielsen’s out-of-home sample had advertisers anticipating single-digit gains versus last year’s deliveries, the ‘Horns-Buckeyes numbers left the early projections in the dust. Fox’s Saturday broadcast absolutely buried the year-ago analogue, a Penn State beatdown of West Virginia that averaged just shy of 3 million viewers.
Fox’s coverage of Ohio State’s 14-7 victory peaked at 18.6 million viewers in the 3 p.m ET quarter-hour, and outranked out six of last winter’s 10 College Football Playoff games. The noon ET showdown also edged Game 7 of the NBA Finals by a margin of 18,000 viewers.
As it happens, the big game in Columbus was one of four college outings that smashed the 10 million viewer mark over the weekend, as ABC put up 10.8 million viewers in Sunday prime with Notre Dame-Miami, which was seen on 20% of all of the TVs that were in operation at the time, while Florida State’s surprise upending of Alabama drew another 10.7 million on Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, LSU-Clemson kicked off ABC’s Saturday Night Football slate with 10.4 million viewers, and when compared to the vanilla panel data, it appears as if the new currency helped boost the audience by some 600,000 viewers—good for a 6% lift.
All told, ABC posted its all-time biggest Week 1 deliveries, as the three aforementioned games were up nearly 40% versus the comparable triad in 2024. The only stinker in the bunch was Tennessee’s blowout of Syracuse, which drew just 2.6 million viewers opposite Texas-Ohio State. The Orange’s poor showing came on the heels of a social media push initiated by the school’s athletic department, in which alums and current students were urged to tune in, as “TV ratings now have an impact on the success of the Orange under the ACC’s new revenue model.” The rallying cry “Every ‘Cuse Click Counts” largely fell on deaf ears, as the college football world trained its collective attention on Ohio Stadium.
Now that the college season is officially underway, expectations for the fall NFL campaign are at a fever pitch. If the opening weekend’s deliveries are anything to go by, the professionals may be poised to put up some truly outstanding numbers. We’ll have our first glimpse at the Big Data-juiced NFL numbers for Thursday night’s Cowboys-Eagles table-setter next Wednesday, but NBC and its advertisers could be in for a real treat if Dallas manages to make a game of it.
Last year’s Ravens-Chiefs kickoff game averaged 29.2 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, making it the 19th most-watched broadcast of 2024.
