Ohio State’s 34-23 victory in Monday’s College Football Playoff national championship game in Atlanta was the most-watched non-NFL sporting event of the year, according to ESPN data released Wednesday. But viewership for the game slid 12% compared to last year as the game quickly turned into a rout and viewers had other options during a busy holiday.
An average of about 22.1 million viewers tuned into the game held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Monday, according to numbers from ESPN. That’s almost equivalent to the entire populations of Florida or Texas, and half of Georgia.
Viewership during the CFP title game peaked between 8:30-8:45 p.m., about an hour after kickoff and while the game was still close, with 26.1 million viewers.
Despite this, it had the third-lowest audience of the past 11 CFP title games, with all three happening within the last five years, according to ESPN. Last year’s game between Michigan and Washington had an average of 25 million viewers and peaked with 28 million.
A few factors could play into the year-over-year decline in viewership. The game coincided with two other massive, attention-grabbing events: the inauguration of President Donald Trump and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The decline of cable television subscriptions in the U.S. and increasing complication of accessing live sports could also be at play. ESPN broadcast the game through its traditional “megacast” format, in which multiple channels broadcast the same game in different ways, and could only be accessed through a cable subscription or live TV bundle through a partnering streaming service. (The inauguration telecast also had low ratings. According to Nielsen, 24.6 million people tuned in to Trump’s inauguration, down from the 33.8 million who watched Joe Biden take the oath of office four years earlier.)
The 2025 game was also one of the most expensive. The average ticket price reached around $2,637, a 36% increase from 2024, according to ticket data analyzed by Front Office Sports. The average more than doubled 2023’s match between the University of Georgia and Texas Christian University, which was $1,072 per ticket.
About 77,660 fans were in attendance, according to game organizers. This was slightly above the last CFP championship held at Mercedes-Benz in 2018, which was 77,430.
