Pop-Tarts Bowl Between Kansas State and NC State is the Most-Watched Bowl Game Through December 28th
The Pop-Tarts Bowl drew big numbers for ESPN on Thursday night.
According to Sports Media Watch, the Pop-Tarts Bowl, in which Kansas State beat NC State, averaged well over four million viewers. Thanks in part to the Pop-Tart mascot, and the great game between two teams, the game averaged 4.31 million viewers on ESPN — the largest audience of the bowl season thus far.
Granted, viewership was down around 20% from the same bowl in the same window last year (under a different sponsor), it did featured two larger brands last year in Florida State and Oklahoma (5.40 million viewers).
Technically, this match up was the least-watched edition of this bowl game since 2020. Prior sponsors have included Camping World, Russell Athletic and Champs Sports in the last four seasons.
But the Pop-Tarts Bowl did handily beat the Alamo Bowl later that evening, with Arizona’s win against Oklahoma averaging 3.93 million viewers. This was down 18% from Washington-Texas a year ago (4.78M) and a three-year low.
The bowl game viewership remains higher than all other sporting events, sans the NFL, with the day’s top non-football sporting event being the Pistons-Celtics NBA regular season game on NBA TV. Detroit’s overtime loss averaged 561,000 viewers.
