College football’s bowl season began on Dec. 16, at 11:30 a.m. Eastern, with two .500 teams squaring off in a 15,000-seat stadium in the Bahamas.
UAB’s 24-20 victory against Miami (Ohio) drew an average of 822,000 viewers to ESPN. It ended up being the least-watched of 39 bowl games on ESPN’s networks and one of only two with fewer than 1 million viewers.
For perspective, heading into a Christmas Day, NBA games on ESPN, ABC and TNT drew an average of 1.5 million viewers, according to Sports MediaWatch.