Texas win over Notre Dame breaks attendance record, draws ‘massive’ viewership

The eyes of the college football world were truly on Austin on Sunday evening as the Texas Longhorns defeated the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in a double-overtime thriller in front of a school-record crowd of 102,315.

The game also drew what ESPN terms as “massive” viewership on television and across platforms — it drew an overnight rating of 7.0, making it the second-most viewed season-opening game in ESPN/ABC history, coming in behind Florida State-Miami in 2005.

There were also 786,000 unique viewers tuned in on WatchESPN, a regular-season record for that service.

Combined, the viewership set an opening-weekend record:

Quite a statement about the appeal of the two programs as the ‘Horns made a statement about the program’s future.