ABC announces ‘best 3-week start ever’ following huge TV ratings for Georgia-Tennessee game
By Sydney Hunte
Published:
Georgia’s emotional overtime win at Tennessee drew a number of eyeballs to ABC on Saturday afternoon.
In fact, it helped the network collect its highest cumulative ratings for the first 3 weeks of a college football season.
According to ESPN’s PR account on X, the game between the Bulldogs and Volunteers averaged 12.6 million viewers, at one point reaching 16 million viewers.
Collectively, an average of 7.8 million viewers have watched college football on ABC over the first 3 weeks of the 2025 season, its highest total in that time span in the network’s history. That’s certainly been helped by ABC taking over CBS’s long-running SEC package beginning with the 2024 season.
The ESPN family of networks has also seen record viewership for College GameDay in 2025. The first 3 episodes of the season have been the highest-ever in the show’s history, topped by Lee Corso’s finale in Week 1.
During Week 4, ABC has another full day of college football coverage. The network will show Arkansas vs Memphis at noon. No. 11 Oklahoma hosts 22nd-ranked Auburn at 3:30 for the SEC on ABC game.
Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Holly Rowe, ESPN’s lead CFB commentary team, will call No. 4 Miami vs. Florida, ABC’s Saturday Night Football game, at 7:30.
Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.
