Last night’s BCS National Championship game, which saw LSU defeat Ohio State 38-24, earned a 14.4/22 final Nielsen rating, down 17.2% from a 17.4/27 for last year’s game, which featured Florida-Ohio State. The game was also down 33.6% from a 21.7/35 in ’06 for ABC’s telecast of the Texas-USC National Championship Game in the Rose Bowl.
We’re talking drops of about 7 million from 2006 to 2007 and approximately about another million from 2007 to 2008. Here’s the rest of the breakdown for the entire set BCS games sans Rose Bowl (+/- based on games played on same date last year, actual Bowl Games may differ)….
National Championship:
2008- LSU-OSU, 14.4/22
2007- Florida-OSU, 17.4/27 -17.2%Rose:
2008- USC-Illinois, 12.0
2007- USC-Michigan, 13.9/23 -13.7%Sugar/Fiesta:
2008- UGA-Hawaii, 7.0/12
2007 (Fiesta)- Boise St.-Oklahoma, 8.4/15 -16.7%Fiesta/Orange:
2008- WVU-Oklahoma, 7.7/13
2007- Louisville-Wake Forest (Orange), 7.0/11 +10.0%
Orange/Sugar:2008- Kansas-VT, 7.4/12
2007- LSU-Notre Dame (Sugar), 9.3/16 -20.4%
I still to this day can’t figure out how Basketball can pull of a Tournament and make a ton of money but Football can’t/couldn’t. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like they’re leaving money on the table under the current format.
Comments are closed.