ACC Championship Viewership Data Shows Alarming Trend: ACC Daily

The viewership numbers for the ACC championship game are in, and they aren't pretty.

Dec 6, 2025; Charlotte, NC, USA; Duke Blue Devils offensive lineman Justin Pickett (77) and Duke Blue Devils head coach Manny Diaz hoist the championship trophy during the 2025 ACC Championship game at Bank of America Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images | Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

The viewership numbers for each conference tournament are now available, and the data shows an alarming trend for the ACC.

ABC & @ESPNCFB score their 2nd best Championship weekend since 2014
 
🏆 @SEC: 16.9M viewers
🏆 @Big12Conference: 9.0M
🏆 @theACC: 3.9M
🏆 @American_Conf: 2.4M
🏆 @SunBelt: 1.1M pic.twitter.com/8YQqacI2H4

— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) December 9, 2025

The Big 12 championship game pulled in just over 5 million more viewers than the ACC Championship game, while the SEC pulled in an excess of 10 million more viewers. At their face value, those numbers don't look great, but there ACC allegiants do not need to be disheartened, there's still room for nuance here.

The ACC Championship was, of course, played between Virginia and Duke - two programs who have incredibly passionate, yet substantially smaller, fan bases than other schools in the league. On top of that, nothing about a 7-5 Duke team playing in the game gives it much appeal to an outside viewer. Sure, Virginia was playing for a spot in the College Football Playoff, but outside of that storyline, the game didn't have much going for it.

Compare that to the Big 12, where two fan bases of large universities were both up for a spot in the CFP, depending on the winner, and the SEC in which Alabama and Georgia squared off, the hype around the games was never going to be in the same stratosphere.

However, there's still something to be said about the vast disparity between those numbers. It's no secret that ACC football has taken its fair share of lumps over the past few seasons, and unless somebody can win a few postseason matchups, that trend doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

The latest bout of conference realignment hurt the ACC more than any power conference outside of the PAC 12, obviously. Those damages are starting to make themselves apparent to the wider college football landscape, and now, the ACC is left without its conference champion in the CFP as a whole.

Couple that with emerging rumors that Notre Dame is looking to join a conference and bring Miami with it, and the future for one of the sport's most storied conferences is in jeopardy, at least from the football side.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and his staff have a conundrum on their hands, and if the country didn't know it before, they do now. As much as fans love parity, someone has to be the team in any given conference, and that team needs to be crowned as the conference champion.

For a look at what happens when the best team does not win consistently, see NASCAR and its postseason format troubles. Have fun down that rabbit hole, and thank me later.