Fox Sports reaped huge ratings rewards for its airing of college football’s Week 1 game between Dion Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes and TCU as sports cable network ESPN wallowed in the results of a cable broadcasting dispute between its owner, Disney, and cable provider Spectrum.
Disney pulled its programming from Spectrum as the two argued over carriage fees, an argument that blacked out ESPN for millions of customers nationwide. And with both college and pro football just starting for the season, the business fight couldn’t have come at a worse time for Disney’s ESPN.
According to the ratings, Spectrum’s 32 million customers were a huge loss for ESPN. Fox scored the second biggest college football audience of the day with 7.262 million for the Buffaloes upset.
LSU/Fla State: 9.165m
Colorado/TCU: 7.262m
Ohio State/Indiana: 4.646m
WVU/Penn State: 3.497M
Nebraska/Minn: 3.492
North Carolina/South Carolina: 3.4m
Oregon St/San Jose St: 3.234m
Rice/Texas: 3.21m
Northwestern/Rutgers: 2.679m
Virginia/Tennessee: 2.464m— Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) September 6, 2023
ABC (9.165m), CBS (4.646m and 3.234m for its two games), and NBC (3.497M) also did well during the day.
But ESPN lost some big numbers amid the Disney-Spectrum carriage dispute, losing 44 percent over last year’s college ratings.
Big Noon also increased 22% in ratings and College Gameday was down 18% over last year. The impact on ratings is pretty staggering from one company blackout.
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 6, 2023
The longer Disney’s fight with Spectrum — and future fights looming with Comcast and other carriers — keeps going, the worse it will be for ESPN.
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