Monday night’s championship game of the inaugural College Football Playoff drew the largest audience in cable television history.
Ohio State’s 42-20 victory over Oregon posted an 18.2 national Nielsen rating and averaged 33.4 million viewers on ESPN.
The game drew an even higher rating in the Atlanta market: 23.0.
The rating is the percentage of TV households tuned in on average.
Nationally, the audience was up about 31 percent from the nearly 25.6 million viewers for Florida State’s victory over Auburn last season in the final championship game of the BCS era. The audience also was significantly larger than for any of the four BCS title games that aired on ESPN.
However, the rating fell short of one championship game of the BCS era: The Texas-USC showdown in the Rose Bowl at the end of the 2005 season drew a 21.7 rating on ABC.
Monday’s game easily surpassed the previous largest cable-TV audiences: 28 million-plus viewers for each of the College Football Playoff semifinal games Jan. 1 on ESPN.
Atlanta’s 23.0 rating for the championship game was the 10th highest among the nation’s 56 metered markets — fifth highest outside the states of the participating teams.
In the participants’ primary home markets, the game posted a 51.2 rating in Columbus, Ohio, meaning just over half of the households there watched, and a 37.6 rating in Portland, Oregon.
The markets with the 10 highest ratings for the game: Columbus, Dayton (43.8); Cleveland (41.3), Portland, Birmingham (36.1), Cincinnati (26.5), Jacksonville (25.7), Knoxville (25.5), Greenville (24.1) and Atlanta.
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