For Jim Harbaugh and his Wolverines, the rallying cry all season has been “Michigan vs. Everybody.” As it turns out, pretty much everybody tuned in to watch the No. 1 team in the land claim its first unanimous national title since 1948.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, Michigan’s decisive 34-13 victory over the Washington Huskies averaged 25.1 million viewers across the ESPN family of networks, marking the biggest TV turnout for a college football national championship game in four years. Viewership for Monday night’s game was up 45% compared to the year-ago Georgia-TCU blowout.
Michigan’s confetti-clinching win served up the second-biggest college football audience of the season, trailing only the Wolverines’ OT defeat of Alabama in last week’s Rose Bowl (27.8 million). Harbaugh’s team also put up huge numbers in its annual outing against Big Ten rivals Ohio State (19.1 million).
The game generated nearly $90 million in total ad sales revenue for Bristol, as legacy CFP partners Allstate, AT&T, Geico, Taco Bell, Dr Pepper and Gatorade invested more than $800,000 for each 30-second in-game spot that aired Monday night. Dr Pepper, which was the very first brand that former ESPN ad sales boss Ed Erhardt signed as on official CFP partner back in March 2014, snapped up three spots. Fellow 10-year CFP backers Allstate and AT&T were among the biggest spenders, as the insurance company and the wireless carrier combined to lay down more than $10 million on the final game of the 2023-24 college football season.
Along with the outsized impact college football has on ESPN’s affiliate deals, the ad revenue goes a long way toward illustrating how valuable the CFP has been to the cable network over the last decade. And with two years left on its legacy contract, Disney would like to keep things in the family; while a deal has yet to be reached, the Mouse House is currently negotiating over what would amount to a six-year, $1.3 billion extension.
The playoffs will expand to a 12-team field next season, which will only serve to further expand ESPN’s CFP ad inventory.
For coach Jim Harbaugh and generations of Michigan boosters, Monday night’s victory was particularly sweet, as it marked a return to the glory days of the Bo Schembechler era. (In 1981, Schembechler notched his first-ever Rose Bowl win with a victory over the Huskies.) But even he never won a title; as coached by Lloyd Carr, the 1997 squad wound up sharing the title with Nebraska, in what would prove to be the final year of the pre-BCS era.
