UCF’s Blowout Win over Stanford Was Least-Viewed UCF Game on ESPN since 2015

The UCF Knights’ dominating 45-27 win over the Stanford Cardinal on Saturday was watched by 967,000 viewers on ESPN, scoring a 0.6 rating, according to SportsMediaWatch.com.

The game is down 33% in viewers and 28% in ratings compared to last year’s game in the same timeslot between Boise State and Oklahoma State, which picked up 1.4 million viewers and a 0.85 rating.

The Knights’ win over the Cardinal lost in its head-to-head time slot to FS1’s game between Iowa and Iowa State, which had over 1.1 million viewers. The game being a blowout for sure contributed to the numbers being down, as well as the typical tough competition with other games in the 3:30 block, with Alabama at South Carolina, the most-watched college football game of the week, being on at same time on CBS and getting 4.9 million viewers.

Overall the UCF-Stanford game was only the 15th most-watched game of the week.

Saturday’s Stanford game snaps an 11-game streak in which UCF football has drawn over a million viewers on either an ABC or ESPN telecast. The last time a football broadcast involving UCF did not draw one million viewers for a football broadcast was the 2015 Thanksgiving debacle vs. USF.

UCF will be on ABC this week for most east coast markets while they will be on ESPN2 for for most west coast markets as the Knights travel to play at Pittsburgh. The UCF-Pitt game will split with BYU-Washington game.

Last season UCF was in a similar TV set up on October 13th when the Knights won at Memphis while the west coast got Washington-Oregon. The TV slot combined for 2.9 million viewers on ABC.