Texas-Georgia Sugar Bowl A Ratings Winner for ESPN

The traditional Big 4 Bowl Games (Rose, Orange, Cotton, Sugar) were once again the most-watched bowl games of the season. The Cotton and Orange Bowls hosted CFP semi-finals while the Sugar and Rose had attractive matchups.

Just under 13.3 million tuned in to watch Texas take down Georgia 28-21 Tuesday night. That’s the best draw for the Sugar Bowl since 16.8 million watched the Alabama-OU game Jan. 2, 2014.

Alabama’s win over OU this time around in the Orange Bowl drew 19.1 million viewers, while 16.8 million tuned in to watch Clemson’s clubbing of Notre Dame. As nice as those numbers are, they are down almost 25% from last years games. The Alabama-Clemson semi-final in last year’s Sugar Bowl had 21.5 million viewers, while the Georgia-OU semi-final in the Rose Bowl had 26 million watching.

Speaking of which, the one constant in any bowl season is that the Rose Bowl will always have the largest audience outside the playoffs, and that continued this season. The Ohio State-Washington contest was also watched by 16.8 million viewers.

Here are the other six bowls to round out the 10 most-watched bowl games.

Fiesta (LSU vs. UCF) 8.5 million

Peach (Florida vs. Michigan) 8.4 million

Alamo (Washington St. vs. Iowa St.) 5.6 million

Gator (Texas A&M vs. N.C. St.) 5.1 million

Orlando (W. Virginia vs. Syracuse) 4.8 million

Liberty (Oklahoma St. vs. Missouri) 3.8 million