Fox kicked off its new College Football Friday window last week to positive results, as Kansas State’s 31-7 blowout of Arizona out-delivered the time slot’s previous occupant.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same day data, the Wildcats’ beatdown of the, uh, Wildcats averaged 2.58 million viewers in Friday prime, up 15% versus the season average for the departing WWE showcase, Friday Night SmackDown. Fox’s inaugural Friday night college football production served up 330,000 more viewers than SmackDown averaged in its 49-episode fifth season on the broadcast network, and was up 46% versus the Sept. 6 finale (1.77 million viewers).
The first Friday night game also kept up its end of the bargain in the dollar demo, as Fox averaged a 0.60 rating, or approximately 800,000 adults 18-49. That was effectively flat compared to SmackDown’s final season on Fox, which averaged a 0.62 rating, good for 816,000 members of the under-50 set. That said, the all-Wildcats broadcast was up 35% compared to last week’s SmackDown wrap (593,460 adults 18-49). Kansas State didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for the Big 12 newcomers, as the No. 14 Wildcats held No. 20 Arizona to a single rushing touchdown midway through the first quarter. The road loss ended Arizona’s nine-game winning streak.
Fox made short work of the rest of the broadcast field on an otherwise sleepy late-summer Friday evening, beating out its next-closest network competitor, CBS’ Let’s Make a Deal, by 140% in the demo. For its part, SmackDown held up well in its new home on basic-cable channel USA Network, averaging 1.72 million viewers, including approximately 740,000 fans in the advertiser-coveted age group.
If nothing else, the early results suggest that Fox is unlikely to regret punting away the pricey WWE showcase, which in 2023-24 was TV’s fourth-highest-rated weekly primetime series behind only Survivor, 60 Minutes and The Bachelor. By way of comparison, the 101 entertainment programs that aired in broadcast prime last season averaged just 477,777 adults 18-49 per episode.
While SmackDown always was a hit among younger viewers, Fox struggled to monetize the two-hour block. According to media buyer estimates, the average unit cost for a 30-second spot in the show last season was around $53,000 a pop, a figure nowhere near in keeping with the show’s deliveries.
The low ad rates were a function of the earning power of the TV wrestling audience; per Kagan estimates, 43% of those who tune into televised grappling have a household income of less than $50,000 per year, and only 18% make over $100,000. Only 23% of the audience for tennis, on the other hand, is on the low end of the income continuum, while 41% of that sport’s fans rake in more than $100,000 per annum.
Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch all but said as much during a year-ago earnings call. “Based on our analysis, we were not hitting the advertising numbers due to the WWE audience,” Murdoch told investors in November 2023.
While you won’t see Big Ten blue-chippers Ohio State and Michigan suiting up for the Friday night games, the new block should still make a splash with football fans looking to get a head start on the weekend. This week’s game features two undefeated programs in Illinois and Nebraska (the Huskers are a 9.5-point favorite), while the Sept. 27 matchup is a cross-country outing between Big Ten newcomer Washington and 2014 convert Rutgers.
If the new package continues to put up numbers, Fox will look to leverage its TGIF audiences to help further build its Big East basketball deliveries in the spring, which in turn will give way to its Friday night UFL slate. In effect, Fox will now have a live-sports mechanism in place from September through May of each year.
