The inaugural College Football Playoff championship game posted an 18.5 Nielsen rating in the 56 major TV markets around the country Monday night, the highest rating ever for ESPN in the metered markets.
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.
The national metered-markets rating of 18.5 for Ohio State’s 42-20 victory over Oregon was sharply higher than the 15.3 for last season’s BCS national championship game between Florida State and Auburn.
ESPN’s previous highest metered-markets rating was 16.1 for the BCS title game between Auburn and Oregon at the end of the 2010 season.
In Atlanta, the 23.0 rating for Monday night’s game was the 10th highest among the 56 metered markets, the 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 homes there watched, and a 37.6 rating in Portland, Oregon.
The top 10 metered markets: 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 (23.0).
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