FOX Loses Millions with No Ohio State Michigan Game
Ohio State fans and Michigan fans across the country will not be able to watch the most celebrated rivalry in all of sports this weekend after The Game was cancelled on Tuesday afternoon. And while the spread was believed to be the largest in series history (30 points) and the Buckeyes have dominated the series lately, the only thing worse than a bad game is no game at all.
But let's not forget about the business of college athletics either. Losing this game is a major blow for FOX Sports as well.
The Big Ten is the oldest and wealthiest conference in the country - and without question, Ohio State and Michigan are its two biggest properties. Fox reportedly pays about $240 million per year (6-year contract that began in 2017) to the league for the exclusive rights to air their football games.
According to a report first published in The Athletic, the average audience for Ohio State and Michigan the last five years is 12.672 million people. Last year's audience was 12.42 million people. The Athletic points out "Fox enjoyed an estimated $18.5 million in TV advertising revenue from last year’s OSU-UM game, per New York City-based ad spending tracker Standard Media Index."
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Since publishing their story, Fox has filled the void left by Ohio State-Michigan with a Pac-12 matchup featuring Utah and Colorado. While the Utes and the Buffaloes will help them recoup some of the loss - both in terms of ad revenue and viewership - there's no way that game will draw quite the same level of attention as the Buckeyes and Wolverines draw on a yearly basis.
Ohio State is one of the most widely watched football teams in America each week, regardless of who they're playing. Last week's game had an audience of 4.1 million people, which was ABC's second most watched game of the season. In Week 1 against Nebraska, FOX drew 6.18 million people for Ohio State's opener - their third largest audience for any college football game of the year to that point, which is impressive considering how late the Big Ten began playing.
When the Buckeyes traveled to Happy Valley to play Penn State the following weekend, 6.534 million people tuned in. That made it the second most-watched college football game of the season to-date and the most-watched game of the year on ABC.
Later in November when Ohio State played Indiana, the Buckeyes drew a metered marketing rating of 4.3, which made that game FOX's most widely watched game of the season.
It's worth pointing out that ratings are down across the board in college football this year - the pandemic has blasted the sport's interest and therefore its ability to make substantial cash. For comparison's sake, last year's Big Ten Championship between the Buckeyes and Wisconsin Badgers drew 13.4 million people.
Ohio State Will Not Have a Replacement Game on Saturday
This year's Big Ten Championship is now a noon Eastern Time kickoff instead of a primetime game. FOX will televise the game between Ohio State and Northwestern.
Last year's College Football Playoff semifinal between Ohio State and Clemson drew a massive audience of 21.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched CFP semifinal not played on New Year's Day (eight games) and an increase of 9 percent in viewership from the previous season's similarly scheduled game.
Interpretation - when Ohio State plays, people watch.
Not surprisingly, both CFP semifinals are going to play on New Year's Day this year. Those two sites are the Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl. This year's national championship game will be played in New Orleans on Jan. 11, 2021.
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