The College Football Playoff, scourge of bowl games? If anything, viewership has never been higher
Viewership is high but attendance is down for college football bowl games. Is change on the horizon?
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On Saturday, Dec. 28, Miami quarterback Cam Ward made the unusual decision to sit out the second half of the Pop-Tarts Bowl. The topic ignited a firestorm of discussion on social media, and by Monday had made its way to ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show and FS1’s The Herd with Colin Cowherd.
Days later, we got a better idea of why the story took off: 6.8 million people watched the Pop-Tarts Bowl on ABC, the highest viewership for the Orlando bowl since 2008 — even with a Denver Broncos-Cincinnati Bengals overtime game airing on NFL Network at the same time. The Pop-Tarts Bowl was followed in prime time by the BYU-Colorado Alamo Bowl, which drew 8 million viewers, the bowl’s biggest audience on record. They did so well they outdrew the Dec. 21 College Football Playoff first-round SMU-Penn State game on TNT (6.6 million).
That pair, and others like it, became part of a notable trend in the 2024-25 bowl season: 21 of the 30 non-Playoff bowls that aired on an ESPN network through Jan. 2 saw year-over-year viewership increases, the majority of them by 20 percent or more.
It’s a repudiation of the longstanding concern that a bigger Playoff would diminish interest in the other bowls.
The Dec. 31 Michigan–Alabama ReliaQuest Bowl (6.5 million) drew ESPN’s biggest non-New Year’s Six bowl audience in nine years. Texas Tech–Arkansas on Dec. 27 was the most-watched Liberty Bowl (4.2 million) in nine years. Nebraska–Boston College on Dec. 28 was the most-watched Pinstripe Bowl (4.2 million) since 2013.
All despite NFL opt-outs, transfer portal departures and in some cases, interim coaches.
But while bowl viewership is trending upward, in-person attendance at many games has gone in the opposite direction.
The Gator Bowl, which attracted crowds of 50,000-plus for decades, had 31,290 in the stands for last week’s Ole Miss-Duke matchup. And the Holiday Bowl, which downsized this season to San Diego State’s Snapdragon Stadium, drew the smallest crowd (23,920) in the bowl’s 46-year history for a Syracuse-Washington State matchup.
“To make ends meet, you need to have respectable crowds, and every now and then a crowd like the Alamo Bowl (64,261) had,” said Gator Bowl President/CEO Greg McGarity. “If you don’t have at least one team within a six-hour drive, you’re going to struggle in attendance.”
All parties recognize that most non-CFP bowls are primarily television programs now, which may eventually require a different business model. All 41 bowls’ current contracts align with the CFP’s, which terminates with the 2025 season. ESPN has already reached a six-year extension with the CFP, but the other bowls’ deals will come up for renewal in the coming year. All but the Sun Bowl (CBS) and Holiday Bowl (Fox) have ESPN as a partner.
That network will have to decide how much it values the non-CFP bowls, which generally produce larger audiences than any of its non-NFL programming that airs over the holidays.
The spectacular success of the Pop-Tarts and Duke’s Mayo bowl sponsorships have raised hopes that title sponsorships will grow in value. Until recently, most brands saw minimal returns on their investments, thus the revolving door of sponsors for the majority of the bowls.
