CU Buffs season-opener does a massive TV number

Coach Prime and the Colorado Buffaloes had the bright lights of primetime on Thursday night, hosting North Dakota State on ESPN.

And boy did the Buffs take advantage of it, not only winning but making some highlight plays in the process. But it wasn’t just the celebrities tunned into watch the Deion Sanders-led team hold on against the FCS powerhouse, at one point 5.6 million people were watching.

ESPN self-reported the number on Friday of the peak viewership number along with the average number of 4.8 million people watching. They shared that the Thursday Night opening game jumped 49% in viewers from 2023 to 2024 with the game being the most viewed primetime show last night by more than double the competition.

So it’s fair to say the nation was watching.

The Battle of the Buffs & Bison becomes @ESPNCFB's best Thursday opener since 2017 🏈 pic.twitter.com/wQQiNo9gsL

— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) August 30, 2024

Behind four touchdowns from Shedeur Sanders, three of which were to Travis Hunter, the Buffaloes hung on for a 31-26 win. The victory was the first for the black and gold since October as last season had a sour ending.

The big TV number sets up perhaps two bigger audiences for the next games. The Buffaloes will travel to both their primary rivals in the coming weeks—heading to Nebraska then Colorado State. The matchup with the Cornhuskers is next Saturday on NBC at 5:30 Denver time. The Rocky Moutain Showdown is also in evening primetime and is on CBS. The over-the-air broadcast, combined with heated games should make for some highly-watched games. These are far from the first highly viewed Buffs games since Sanders came to Boulder.

CU was the most-watched team in the nation until Rivalry Week last season. Through the first five weeks of the 2023 season, the Buffs had double the viewership of any team in the country, and led the country until the final week of the regular season, rivalry week, according to CU’s SID. Even through conference championships and bowl season, the Buffs ended up No. 8 for total viewership and No. 6 for average viewership for the full season. CU was part of five of the 25 most watched games of the 2023 season and of those games, only Alabama was in more, appearing in six of the 25, which included both the SEC title game and the Rose Bowl. Those same five games also rank in the top 13 in CU history for most-watched games, and if you take out the postseason games from that list, CU had five of six most-watched games in regular season history.