Colorado’s Double Overtime Victory Against Colorado State Draws Season-High College Football Audience
The Colorado Buffaloes established their dominance both on and off the field with Saturday’s matchup against Colorado State.
Not only did Deion Sanders’ team take home the win after an intense showdown that went into double overtime, the late night game also delivered the largest college football audience of the season — and it did so despite a 10 p.m. ET start.
The game averaged 9.3M viewers, which is up more than half a million over last week’s viewership for Colorado’s win over Nebraska. Airing on ESPN, the game also marks the largest late night college football audience on record (across any network) as well as the fifth-largest regular season audience ever for ESPN.
According to Nielsen, the game peaked around 11 p.m. ET with 11.1M viewers. Colorado didn’t solidify their 43-35 victory until about 3 a.m. ET.
Colorado had been inching toward the No. 1 game of the week in both of the first two regular season games, but it completely blew past all other games for Week 3. The second most-watched matchup was South Carolina vs. Georgia with about 5.4M viewers. Tennessee vs. Florida, which aired on ESPN right before Colorado/Colorado State, took third place with 5.3M.
Colorado now claims three of the five most-watched games of the season. The other two are the top games of the first two weeks, FSU vs. LSU and Texas vs. Alabama.
For comparison, Colorado’s most-watched matchup last season was their Friday night opener against TCU, which brought in about 1.25M viewers on ESPN. This season, that same opener drew 7.3M people.
Next week’s matchup against No. 10 Oregon is sure to bring in quite the audience, as Colorado continues its stellar season.
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