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ESPN’s College Football Playoff final rankings show sees significant drop in viewership
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While everyone’s attention has been on other things this year, for sports fans, having to live without sports for the better part of the year was difficult.
As a result, when the fields and courts were finally active again it was expected that the fans would flood back to their screens to catch whatever action they could.
That wasn’t the case.
When the NBA returned in the fall, the regular season was met with dismal ratings, and the NBA Finals saw their lowest viewership in history.
Likewise, the College Football Playoff show on ESPN garnered exceptionally low ratings, with nearly 1/3 of the viewership of the debut show in 2014.
Final College Football Playoff rankings show viewership (airs on ESPN):
2020: 867,000 viewers
2019: 954,000 viewers
2018: 1.40 million viewers
2017: 1.63 million viewers
2014: 2.2 million viewers (debut edition)Thanks to @paulsen_smw for historical data.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) December 23, 2020
The length of the show – four hours long – certainly didn’t help the cause, as much of the content was completely unnecessary, after all, how long does it take to announce four teams? But what also likely contributed to the decrease was the fact that what the CFP committee was revealing was pretty much a foregone conclusion, as the four teams announced surprise nobody.
Will the playoffs themselves get our attention?
We’ll have to wait and see.
Scott Schultz covers Michigan State Football, along with Breaking News for B1G Football & Basketball for Saturday Tradition. He also serves as an Automotive News Editor & Writer, and Softball Writer elsewhere on the web. Follow him on Twitter @SRSchultz.