Indiana’s win over Ohio State most-watched Big Ten championship ever

A showdown of the nation’s top-rated teams in the Big Ten title game pulled in huge viewership for Fox.

The network said Tuesday that No. 2 Indiana’s 13-10 win over No. 1 Ohio State was the most-watched Big Ten championship game ever, averaging 18.3 million viewers. The broadcast peaked at nearly 20 million viewers near the game’s end, according to Fox.

Fox said the Hoosiers-Buckeyes matchup was the most-watched championship game of the weekend, outpacing the SEC title game between Georgia and Alabama, the Big 12 championship featuring Texas Tech and BYU and the ACC matchup between Virginia and Duke. It also outperformed previous Big Ten championship’s by a wide margin: last year’s game between Oregon and Penn State averaged 10.5 million viewers on CBS.

The pedigree of a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup made Saturday’s game an enticing draw, and it also featured one of the biggest brands in college football. Ohio State has now appeared in two of the season’s most-watched games. The Buckeyes’ rivalry win over Michigan drew 18.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched regular-season game of the year, according to Fox.

Viewership also increased across the sport this season. The regular season ended with over 179 billion minutes of viewing across all networks, according to Nielsen data cited by Fox’s Michael Mulvihill. That was a 9 percent increase from last year.

Those figures are likely bolstered by Nielsen’s new “Big Data Plus Panel” method, introduced this year. Alongside its traditional panel sampling, the company now incorporates data from smart TVs and streaming devices to provide a more accurate picture of what viewers are watching. Sports viewership is up across the board, as it appears the changed methodology is capturing more viewers than the previous panel-only Nielsen ratings.

Even with the change, Saturday’s game had all the makings of an instant classic. The Hoosiers clinched their first Big Ten title since 1967, the year they went to the Rose Bowl. Indiana will return to the Rose Bowl to face the winner of No. 8 Oklahoma vs. No. 9 Alabama on Jan. 1, while Ohio State will take on the winner of No. 7 Texas A&M vs. No. 10 Miami on Dec. 31 in the Cotton Bowl.