2023 ACC TV Viewership
A look back at ratings and viewership for ACC football games during the 2023-2024 season.
What were the TV ratings and viewership numbers for ACC teams (including new teams Cal, SMU, and Stanford) during the 2023-2024 season?
I’m glad you asked because I culled that data from Sports Media Watch and calculated a few basic numbers of interest.
During the 2024-2025 football season, I’ll track those numbers and share them on Twitter.
Let’s look at some 2023-2024 data:
It’s important to remember this data doesn’t include games on the ACC Network (ACCN) since ESPN doesn’t release those ratings publicly. These numbers include bowl games for teams that earned such an appearance.
Thoughts:
Since FSU and Louisville played 14 games last season (12 regular season games, the ACC Championship game, and a bowl game) we can deduce they only appeared on the ACCN once, and three times respectively.
We can further deduce that Clemson appeared on the ACCN four times.
Thus, the view held by some that FSU and Clemson leaving the ACC would destroy the value of the ACCN doesn’t hold much water since those two schools’ football teams rarely appear on the ACCN.
It’s hardly surprising that games on ABC and ESPN draw the best ratings, feature the most attractive games, and occupy the best time slots.
Games on the CW fared better than games on ESPN2 and ESPNU, and some weeks outperformed games on FS1 and the BTN. Again, the attractiveness of the matchups and the time slot impact these things.
It would be nice to compare this data to the ratings and viewership of ACCN games.
FSU led the conference, no surprise there, buoyed by massive viewership and ratings for the Orange Bowl game and season opener against LSU.
Still, Clemson, Miami, Duke, Louisville, and North Carolina all averaged over 2M viewers per game, with Georgia Tech just missing the 2M threshold.
Let the season begin! I’ll be watching.
