Alamo Bowl ratings second-highest of ESPN's bowl games before NYE
AUSTIN (KXAN) — With Valero Alamo Bowl attendance at its highest since 2015 to witness Washington's 27-20 win over Texas on Dec. 29, the television audience also showed up.
According to ESPN, 4.8 million people tuned in to the game, the second-highest viewership for a bowl game not considered a New Year's Six game. Typically, the bowl gets a time slot all to itself, but this year and for only the second time ever, the game had competition. The Cowboys and Titans played the NFL's Thursday night game on Amazon Prime.
The Cheez-It Bowl from Orlando, featuring Florida State's 35-32 win over Oklahoma, was the network's highest-rated non-NY6 game at 5.4 million viewers. The Liberty Bowl (Arkansas-Kansas) followed the Alamo Bowl with 3.9 million viewers, then the UnionHome Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl (Wake Forest-Missouri) came in with 3.5 million viewers. The Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl (Minnesota-Syracuse) from Yankee Stadium rounded out the top five-rated games with 2.7 million viewers.
The Cheez-It Bowl ran in the time slot just ahead of the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 29 with an opening kick at 5 p.m. CT. The Alamo Bowl kicked off shortly after 8 p.m.
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All but three bowl games, the Holiday, Sun and Arizona bowls, are televised on the ESPN/ABC family of networks. The Holiday Bowl ran on FOX, the Sun Bowl on CBS, and the Arizona Bowl streamed online on the Barstool Network.
Texas has been a big TV draw this season thanks to playing in high-profile games. Along with the Alamo Bowl, the Texasa-Alabama game in Week 2 in Austin averaged 10.6 million viewers on Fox Sports, and it was the most-streamed game ever for the network. Alabama, ranked No. 1 in the country at the time, edged the Longhorns 20-19.