One of the biggest television audiences of the year watched Michigan football stun Ohio State at The Horseshoe last Saturday. 

According to FOX Sports, some 12,323,000 viewers tuned in for the Wolverines’ upset over their rivals. That made it the most-watched Big Ten game of the 2024 season on any network and the second most-watched college football game of the season on any network. 

The only game to attract a larger television audience was Georgia vs. Texas in Week 8, when 13.19 million people watched that showdown on ABC, per Sports Media Watch. 

Michigan regularly features among the most-watched college football games of any given season, and a FOX executive detailed how highly the network values the program. When choosing which Big Ten games to broadcast during the 2024 college football season, Fox selected Michigan-Ohio State and Michigan-Texas with its top two picks, FOX executive Michael Mulvihill confirmed earlier this fall on The Joel Klatt Show.

“This is why Gus and Jenny and I call Michigan-Ohio State every single year, is because we have the top pick in the Big Ten every year, and that’s of course going to be the top pick because it’s the highest rated game in college football,” Joel Klatt, the host of the show and the color commentator for FOX’s top broadcast crew, said.

Mulvihill said choosing The Game with the No. 1 pick every year is “the obvious first selection” for the network. 

Though 12.32 million viewers is an impressive figure, it represents a step back from the 2023 edition of The Game, which featured two undefeated, top-five teams. Last year’s broadcast earned 19,065,000 viewers on FOX, which at the time represented the most-watched regular season college football game on any network since 2011 and the most-watched regular season college football game in FOX Sports history.

U-M’s victories over Ohio State in 2021 and 2022, both of which decided the Big Ten East and had College Football Playoff implications, also scored massive audiences.

Below are the viewership numbers for Michigan vs. Ohio State since 2021: 

• 2021: 15,893,000
• 2022: 17,140,000
• 2023: 19,065,000
• 2024: 12,323,000

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