ESPN booked record ratings for the College Football Playoff semifinal games.

On Jan. 1, 2015, 28.2 million viewers watched Oregon beat the Florida State Seminoles 59-20. Then, 28.3 million watched Ohio State knock off Nick Saban’s Alabama 42-35 in the Sugar Bowl.

Add it up, and the two playoff games are the two most-watched broadcasts in cable television history. It seems ESPN’s big bet ($7.3 billion) on the rights to broadcast the CFB playoff was indeed smart money.

Interestingly, the two games also beat out ESPN’s NFL playoff game this past weekend:

However, it’s worth noting that the college football playoff viewership is nowhere close to Super Bowl viewership which had 111 million viewers last year.

With the CFP ratings, ESPN now owns the 18 highest watched broadcasts ever on cable television, and it is yet another reminder of how big the network has become.

As news of the ratings bonanza spreads, a new television option for sports fans is being rolled out. For the first time ever, fans can tune into live ESPN over the internet without a cable subscription.

As The Verge reports:

For $20 a month — yes, twenty dollars — you get access to a lineup of cable networks that includes TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, the Disney Channel, ESPN, and ESPN2. ESPN is obviously a huge get for Dish and could earn Sling TV plenty of customers all on its own. ESPN just ended another year as TV’s leading cable network, and now you won’t need a traditional cable package to watch it. For sports fanatics, that could prove enticing. But Dish has hinted that there may be limits on watching ESPN on mobile thanks to red tape from existing deals between the network and Verizon. We’ll need to wait for the specifics on that.

For sports fans dreaming of an a la carte approach to television consumption, ESPN has always been the key obstacle to “unbundling” of cable television channels. Users have never been able to cancel a traditional cable subscription and pay for content on an a la carte basis while having live sports be a part of that content… At least not live sports that the masses actually want to watch.

With the new $20/mo approach by Sling TV, this is now at least partially possible.

Combine the $20/mo package that gives you ESPN with Netflix or other on-demand streaming and you’ve got a compelling alternative option to your Comcast, AT&T or Brighthouse cable subscriptions.

What would you be missing? Well, SEC Network for one, but maybe just convince your neighbor to keep the SEC Network for those occasions when your team is playing on that channel.

Either way, it’s a great first step for consumers of live sports and other content. More options mean consumers win.