This weekend’s Ohio State and Oregon game drew in the biggest primetime audience for a regular season Big Ten game since 2008.
The Saturday night matchup, which saw the Oregon Ducks score a 32-31 victory over Ohio State, averaged 10.2 million viewers across NBC, Peacock and NBC Sports digital platforms, according to live-plus-same-day fast national data from Nielsen and digital figures from Adobe Analytics. Final viewership numbers will be available on Tuesday.
The close game became the most-watched regular season game between teams in the Big Ten conference since Oct. 25, 2008, when the Penn State-Ohio State game drew 10.4 million viewers on ABC.
As Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel led the Ducks to victory in the game’s final minutes, the audience tuning in via NBC Sports peaked at 13.4 million viewers between 10:45-11 p.m. ET. Among local markets, the Ohio State-Oregon game scored its biggest audiences in Columbus, Cleveland, Portland, Cincinnati and Detroit.
After the game, Oregon is now ranked No. 2 while Ohio State is ranked No. 4. — behind Penn State at No. 3 — with the Big Ten holding three of the top four teams in the country.
NBC and Peacock will host the next Big Ten matchup this coming Saturday between the Iowa Hawkeyes at the Michigan State Spartans, with coverage beginning at 7 p.m. ET while the game kicks off at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Elsewhere, the fall sports season is also bringing impressive viewership to baseball, with 4.098 million viewers tuning into the National League Division Series’ combined nine games on Fox and Fox Sports, becoming the most-watched LDS on any network since 2015. On Friday night, an audience of 7.5 million viewers tuned in to watch the Dodgers’ Game 5 victory against the Padres across Fox, Fox Sports and Fox Deportes.
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