The new playoff era is drawing lots of college football fans to bowl game broadcasts. But it isn't necessarily bringing more fans into stadium seats.
ESPN announced the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl semifinals in the College Football Playoff drew the largest two audiences in cable television history, with each game attracting more than 28 million viewers. The two semifinals drew more viewers than any of the four BCS championship games broadcast by ESPN, which also will air Monday's title game between Ohio State and Oregon.
"That was a pleasant surprise," said Burke Magnus, ESPN's senior vice president of programming and acquisitions. "We're cautiously optimistic about Monday, but obviously the new format has resonated with fans."
ESPN spokesperson Keri Potts said ESPN's bowl telecasts through New Year's Day drew an average rating of 3.4, whereas its average rating through all its bowl telecasts other than the championship last season was 3.2. Ratings represent the percentage of homes with televisions tuned to a program.
While ratings are slightly up across the board for bowl games, attendance has dipped.
The 38 bowl games this season have drawn an average announced attendance of 43,285, down 9.2 percent from the average of 47,659 for the 34 bowls last season that led up to the BCS championship game.
Those figures are skewed by the fact all four new bowls that had their inaugural games this season drew fewer than 30,000 fans. But even if you throw those four games out of the mix, the average attendance for the remaining 34 bowls is 45,904, down 3.7 percent from last season.
Wright Waters, the executive director for the Football Bowl Association, notes the attendance drops reflect regular-season trends. A CBSSports.com study showed the average regular-season attendance for home games this year was 43,483, down 4 percent from last season and its lowest figure since 2000.
"It's not just a bowl problem," Waters said. "It's a college football problem that we've got to deal with."
The first season of the playoff era created plenty of uncertainty for all the bowl games.
The old BCS format was replaced by the "New Year's Six," which featured the Fiesta, Orange and Peach on New Year's Eve with the two semifinals and the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day.
That new format led to plenty of change.
For instance, the Peach Bowl was formerly known as the Chick-fil-A Bowl and traditionally pitted a Southeastern Conference school against an Atlantic Coast Conference program in a prime-time game. This year, the playoff committee arranged a matchup that had a 12:30 p.m. kickoff.
TCU trounced Ole Miss 42-3 in front of an announced attendance of 65,706, ending the bowl's string of 17 consecutive sellouts.