Big Ten, SEC Expansion Consolidates Over Half Of College Football Audience

Conference realignment has been shifting college sports (and particularly college football) on its axis for much of the last two decades. But recent expansion moves by the Big Ten and SEC have not just added members, but also rapidly consolidated college football's audience inside the walls of the two growing leagues – as iSpot data reveals.

• Audience data compiled by iSpot shows that this year's SEC (with Texas and Oklahoma in the fold) and Big Ten (plus Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington) would've combined for 57.2% of the sport's entire audience last regular season.
• Adding Texas and OU moves the SEC from 24.0% of college football viewing to 29.2%, while the Big Ten's four additions push it from 19.5% to 28.0%.
• The Pac-12 was No. 3 by share of college football viewing last season, with 17.2% of the sport's audience, but is down to just 2.1% in 2024 with only Oregon State and Washington State remaining.
• After adding Cal, SMU and Stanford, the ACC made a small jump from 12.4% to 13.6% of viewing, while the Big 12 offsetting Texas/Oklahoma with Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah moved the league from 14.1% of viewing to 14.7%.