• by Wayne Friedman , January 13, 2015

ESPN broke another cable TV viewing record with the new College Football Playoff’s National Championship game aired on Monday. ESPN pulled in a massive 33.4 million viewers for Ohio State 42-20 victory over Oregon — the highest-viewed single cable TV telecast ever.

The championship game blew past the semifinal games aired a week ago on ESPN — the previous record holders were the Allstate Sugar Bowl, with 28,271,000 viewers and the Rose Bowl, at 28,164,000 viewers. 

Digitally, ESPN also hit new heights with the live streaming of the game. Its WatchESPN pulled 1,161,000 unique viewers, with 82,000,000 minutes viewed.

The College Football Playoff Championship game was 31% higher than the previous national championship game a year ago — the 2014 BCS National Championship, between Auburn and Florida State, which generated 25,572,000.

In 2012, ESPN signed a 12-year, $7.3 billion deal for the college football playoffs — averaging $608 million per year. Reports suggest that TV advertisers paid around $1 million for a 30-second commercial in the 2015 championship game.