This season’s two College Football Playoff semifinal games are being played on New Year’s Day rather than on New Year’s Eve as they have for the past two seasons and that has media buyers and ESPN sales executives smiling.
At worst, ratings should top those of the past two years, and at best, they could get close to the more than 50 million viewers the two semifinal games drew on New Year’s Day three years ago.
Those two New Year’s Day semifinals drew a combined 56.5 million TV viewers on Jan. 1, 2015, compared to the combined 34.2 million and 39.4 million who watched the past two years when the games were on New Year’s Eve.
With pretty much no one working, and no one heading out to New Year’s Eve parties, New Year’s Day is the ideal time to draw the most possible college football fans to their TV sets. When they are pretty much at home sitting on their couches.
“In an ideal world, these two semifinal national championship playoff games would always be played on New Year’s Day,” said one media buyer for some major advertisers, “but that’s not going to happen.”
It’s not going to happen because the Rose Bowl, which is hosting the 5 p.m. semifinal game that will be televised on ESPN sibling network ABC this New Year’s Day, has refused to move out of that time period. So a CFP semifinal game can only be played once every three years on New Year’s Day.
However, optimism is high for this season’s two semifinal telecasts. Leading out of the 5 p.m. Rose Bowl presented by Northwestern Mutual, which pits #2 Oklahoma vs. #3 Georgia, will be the 8:45 p.m. Allstate Sugar Bowl on ESPN featuring #1 Clemson, the defending national champion, vs. #4 Alabama. And that game will be a rematch between the two teams that met in last season’s championship game.
Commercial time for 30-second spots in each of the semifinal games have cost advertisers about $750,000 a pop, with spots in the Jan. 8 national championship game going for about $1.2 million per unit.
ESPN, which over guaranteed ratings for the two semifinal games on New Year’s Eve in 2015 and wound up owing about $20 million in make goods to advertisers, toned down the guarantees last year and ratings were closer to guarantees.
