Washington Football's Season Opening Victory Draws Massive Viewership

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If the Apple Cup goes away in a few years, it won't be for a lack of fans still tuning in to watch.

The first—and likely last—Sunday edition of the annual rivalry game between Washington and Washington State averaged 5.5 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. It marked the largest ever viewing audience for an afternoon Big Ten game on the network since the conference package began in 2023.

The eye-popping number dwarfs last year's 1.7 million average on CBS, though there are several factors at play that benefited the 2026 matchup. UW-WSU drew more this year thanks in large part to it being the only game on in the 1:00 p.m. time slot, which both Jedd Fisch and Cougars' coach Kirby Moore pointed out in the lead-up to kickoff.

However, it still fell short of the 2023 Apple Cup on Fox, which averaged 5.85 million viewers, though that game had a significant amount of impact with UW coming into that matchup 11-0 under then-coach Kalen DeBoer. Even though both games ended up being close at the start of the fourth quarter, being that it was still in late November, a date it has held for several decades, certainly played a factor.

UW's 24-10 victory over WSU came in behind Wisconsin vs. Notre Dame, which averaged 8.1 million viewers for a 6:30 p.m. local time kickoff. The Apple Cup edged out Western Michigan at Michigan, the latest game on Sunday that aired on the network, by one million viewers on average.

"I think that's a cool thing about being in the Big Ten," Fisch said when asked about the impact of what the conference move has brought in terms of reach and viewers.

"You can start kind of grabbing people outside the footprint of the Pac-12. Now we're looking at a deal where you can be playing on Sunday on national TV at 1:00, and all those guys in Florida and Georgia and Mississippi and North Carolina and Louisiana, like Trez Davis, all those guys that are there are now seeing it and seeing what Husky football is all about."

Fisch cited several players, namely third-year defensive line transfer addition Kai McClendon and a pair of freshmen, quarterback Derek Zammit from New Jersey and Davis from Louisiana, as examples of current UW football players who've already made the trek to Montlake because of the expanded reach that the move to the Big Ten has brought the program.

This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Washington Football's Season Opening Victory Draws Massive Viewership

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