Michigan Football Led Nation In Attendance, TV Ratings And Viewers In 2017
For the 41st time in the last 43 years, Michigan football led the country in attendance last season.
The school averaged 111,589 fans per home game, topping Ohio State (107,495) for most in the nation. The only two years Michigan did not lead the country in home attendance average were 1997, when it was No. 2, and 2014, when it came in third.
According to a report from the National Football Foundation, only four schools averaged more than 100,000 fans per game. Penn State (106,707) and Alabama (101,722) join U-M and OSU.
Rounding out the 2017 Top Ten leaders for average home team attendance were: Texas A&M (98,802), LSU (98,506), Tennessee (95,779), Texas (92,778), Georgia (92,746) and Nebraska (89,798).
Ohio State had the most spectators at its games, including home, away, neutral site and postseason games with 1,254,160. Michigan was fifth with 1,140,358.
As we reported in January, Michigan also ended the regular season averaging the most TV viewers per game and highest ratings per game in the country.
Michigan topped Alabama and Ohio State in both categories. U-M averaged 5.726 million viewers per game in its nine nationally broadcasted games in the 2017 season. Alabama averaged 5.709 million per game in 11 national games and Ohio State averaged 5.256 million per game in its 10 nationally televised contests.
More Notes From The Report:
• Penn State recorded a 6.4 percent increase in home attendance for the 2017 season, including the largest crowd in Beaver Stadium history with 110,823 fans attending the Oct. 21 game against Michigan.
• Michigan played in two of the 10 most-watched regular season games in 2017. The Michigan-Ohio State game was No. 5 (10,507,000 on FOX) and the Michigan-Florida game was No. 9 (7,650,000 on ABC).
• Five teams played in three or more games ranked in the Top 25 for viewership: Michigan (5), Ohio State (5), Alabama (4), Auburn (3) and Penn State (3).
• The Outback Bowl, which featured Michigan playing South Carolina on ESPN2 at Noon on New Year’s Day, delivered a 3.1 overnight rating, up 72 percent from the 2016 Outback Bowl, the last time the game aired on ESPN2. The viewership was 5,095,000 and a 5,366,000 total live audience, making it the second most-viewed program ever on ESPN2, behind only the 2015 Outback Bowl.
• The SEC led all FBS conferences in attendance for the 20th straight year, averaging 75,074 fans per game or a total of 7,357,228 in 2017, followed by the Big Ten (66,227), Big 12 (56,852), Pac-12 (49,601) and the ACC (48,442).
• FOX, which expanded its coverage through a new deal with the Big Ten finished the regular season with record-high viewership, increasing its average from 2.951 million to 3.625 million or a 23 percent increase.
• The Big Ten championship game between Ohio State and Wisconsin drew 12,918,000 viewers on FOX, ranking as the network’s most-watched college football game since the 2013 Big Ten Championship and at the time was the network’s most-watched prime-time telecast of any kind since Game 7 of the 2017 World Series.
• The overall attendance for NCAA football games across all divisions (FBS, FCS, Division II and Division III) drew 47,622,196 fans at home games, neutral-site games and postseason games in 2017. The number represents a 3.3 percent drop from the 2016 season, but it also represents a 29.2 percent increase since 1997 and a 148.9 percent increase since 1948 when the NCAA began collecting attendance reports.
• According to a Gallup Poll, 56 percent of U.S. adults said they were college football fans, making it the second most popular sport in the country behind only the NFL. The core fan group grew by 1.4 million people in 2017.
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