College football’s biggest rivalry delivered in huge fashion for Fox last weekend.

The network said late Thursday that it averaged 18.4 million viewers for its Nov. 29 coverage of Ohio State and Michigan. The audience is the biggest for any college football game on any network this season, and tops Fox’s season-opening broadcast of the Buckeyes and Texas, which averaged 16.66 million viewers. 

Anticipation was very high going into the game, even beyond the history of the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry, and the audience now represents the second-most-watched college football broadcast in the regular season on Fox. 

The audience peaked at 20.54 million, and the average viewership represented a 49% increase from last year’s Ohio State-Michigan game. The comparable 2023 figure of 19.06 million, however, still tops this year’s draw. 

Skid Snapped

The Buckeyes ended a four-year losing streak to the Wolverines, winning 27–9. The victory further solidified Ohio State, already the defending national champions, as the No. 1 team in the country going into this weekend’s conference championship games.

Ohio State will face Indiana on Saturday night for the Big Ten championship, and a victory there would further solidify the Buckeyes as the top seed going into the College Football Playoff. 

The historic draw for college football was part of a big holiday weekend that also historic audience for the NFL on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

Black Friday was hardly a discount situation when it comes to Amazon’s sports viewership on the unofficial holiday.

The streaming and online retail giant said Thursday that it averaged 16.33 million viewers in the U.S. on Amazon Prime Video for its Nov. 28 National Football League game between the Bears and Eagles. The figure is up 21% from last year’s 13.51 million average viewers for a Raiders-Chiefs game, and up 70% from the debut Black Friday NFL game in 2023 between the Jets and Dolphins.

According to Nielsen, the Bears-Eagles game was the most-watched sporting event on Black Friday since at least 1991, beating a 2022 FIFA men’s World Cup game on Fox between the U.S. and England. 

The hefty increase for Amazon follows a record-setting Thanksgiving Day for the NFL involving Fox, CBS, and NBC, and burnishes the league’s immense power across the holiday weekend. 

In addition to the NFL audience, Amazon also said it averaged 2.09 million viewers for two NBA games, beating a comparable basketball window last year by 121% and representing Amazon’s most-watched broadcasts of the league so far. 

The full day and night of live sports, amounting to more than 15 hours of coverage, represented a landmark moment in the company’s history. 

The Bears-Eagles game was shown globally for free following a recent adjustment to the broadcast plan with the NFL, and in addition to the U.S. audience, the contest reached a total of 5.29 million viewers, according to Amazon’s first-party data. The U.K., Germany, and Japan were the top international draws. 

Another Game?

NFL executives have downplayed the possibility of adding a fourth game on Thanksgiving to tap further into what is the league’s biggest viewership day of the regular season. Adding to the Black Friday schedule, however, is more possible.

League commissioner Roger Goodell told The Wall Street Journal that he isn’t ruling out such changes, and that “we’re going to look at everything. I would expect that there will be changes going forward.”

Making such a move, however, would require working further around the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. That provision, designed to help protect college and high school football, prohibits “all or a substantial part” of pro football games airing on Fridays after 6 p.m. ET between the second Friday of September each year and the second Saturday in December. 

Adding a second Black Friday game, as a result, would likely require scheduling that one before the existing one that starts at 3 p.m. ET.

WASHINGTON — Some events in sports that are essentially a reading of names or dates have grown into massive, over-the-top spectacles. The National Football League’s Draft and schedule release are certainly prime examples. FIFA’s World Cup draw, set for Friday, seeks to put even those high-profile events to shame. 

Soccer’s global governing body has scheduled a lavish ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to outline the groupings for next year’s men’s World Cup, set to be held in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The heads of state for all three countries—U.S. President Donald Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico—will attend the event.

Rather than a staid, politically tinged event, though, the glitzy showcase will also lend an additional spotlight on a deepening relationship between the Trump White House and FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino, as well as a Kennedy Center that is now under the firm control of Trump instead of those with a background in performing arts. 

FIFA has booked a series of entertainers, including Andrea Bocelli, Nicole Scherzinger, Robbie Williams, and the Village People, with the latter performing its “Y.M.C.A.” that has become a Trump anthem. The governing body is also expected to award a newly created peace prize to Trump, representing something of a consolation prize after he did not receive a Nobel Peace Prize that he covets. 

A wide range of celebrities and star athletes are also expected to attend, including a quartet of “draw assistants” that includes Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal, Wayne Gretzky, and Aaron Judge. 

How It Will Work

The draw will assign the 48 competing countries into one of 12 groups. The countries have been assigned to draw pots, largely based on current FIFA world rankings. Six of the final World Cup slots have yet to be claimed and will be during upcoming play-in tournaments. 

The outcome of Friday, however, will be the collection of teams that will guide the group stage of the global tournament. 

The group positions for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have been predetermined to ensure those teams will play in their respective home countries. Who will join them, however, is a key part of what the draw will determine, and the entire effort is designed to help ensure an even spread of team quality across the bracket. 

The day will end with individual national teams knowing their opponents and match dates, but the finalized match schedule that slots specific matches to specific cities won’t arrive until Saturday. 

Missing Messi?

Argentine star Lionel Messi, currently in the midst of a starring run with Inter Miami to Saturday’s MLS Cup, said he is not certain whether he will participate in next year’s World Cup. 

Messi will turn 39 during the tournament, and physical concerns are paramount. 

“I hope I can be there. I’ve said before that I’d love to be there,” he told ESPN. “At worst, I’ll be there watching it live, but it will be special.”

WASHINGTON — After more than three decades, Major League Soccer’s days of conducting itself like a startup are over.

League commissioner Don Garber has not decided on his future, and his contract currently runs through 2027. Team owners, however, have formally begun a succession planning process that not only includes the commissioner’s post but numerous other senior positions in the MLS office.

“MLS has been operating almost like a startup for 30 years, so we never gave any thought to succession planning, but high-performing companies need to do that,” Garber tells Front Office Sports. “So the start of this process is about having a proper succession for not just the next commissioner but for the next leader of our commercial business, the next leader of our sporting business, and so on. 

“My agreement ends in 2027. I’ve got a lot of work to do before then. I haven’t made any decision about what I’m doing. Right now, I’m focused on these next couple of years,” he said.

Garber, in his post since 1999, is 68. 

Past, Present, and Future

Beyond the succession, historical parallels were very much on Garber’s mind as he made his annual state-of-the-league address here on Thursday night, the eve of the draw for the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup. 

The league was originally born more than three decades ago during a tournament draw in advance of the 1994 FIFA men’s World Cup, held in the U.S., and it then went through many difficult growing pains in its early years. As the draw for soccer’s biggest tournament returns to the U.S. tomorrow, Garber said the trajectory for MLS is on the cusp of significant acceleration, citing historic levels of growth in a wide range of areas, including attendance, franchise values, stadium development, quality of play on the pitch, and the forthcoming bump from the World Cup.

“The progress isn’t just clear. It’s extraordinary,” Garber said. “Soccer has arrived [in the U.S.], MLS is one of the drivers of the sport’s success in our nation. Today, our league is firmly established … and MLS has fulfilled its founding promise.”

Much of the optimism looking ahead is centered around MLS 3.0, a wide-ranging growth initiative that includes forthcoming stadiums in Miami, New York, and Chicago between 2026 and 2028; next year’s World Cup; enhanced player development rules; and the recent, landmark decision to adopt a fall-to-spring schedule beginning in 2027.

Garber’s comments also represented something of a victory lap after a flurry of recent developments that also include a dynamic playoff run by Inter Miami led by Argentine star Lionel Messi and the reworking of its groundbreaking rights deal with Apple. 

“We are in the midst of a dramatic, generational change,” Garber said. “Soccer is now an American pastime.”