The Grey Cup went out with a bang on CBC, which saw a 4% increase in its average viewership for the CFL final on Sunday, in which the Saskatchewan Roughriders defeated the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 23-19.

The game, which got underway at 6 pm ET, scored a strong 3.3 million viewers (2+), peaking at 3.7 million between 9 and 9:30 pm, and making it CBC’s sixth-most-watched Grey Cup since the process of tracking game-only audiences began in 1996.

It marked the pubcaster’s final Grey Cup game for at least five years, as rival TSN takes over broadcasting duties of CFL regular season and playoff games next year. CBC had been televising the CFL and Grey Cup for 55 years.

Meanwhile, audiences were down for the East Final last week, as one million viewers tuned in for the Winnipeg-Montreal match-up, while an average 1.5 million viewers watched Saskatchewan take on Calgary in the West Final for an audience increase of 12%.

In other football telecast news, CTV is continuing to grow viewership for its Sunday afternoon 1-4 pm NFL block, which is up 38% since the beginning of the season. CTV’s national average audience was 353,000 for Sunday’s broadcast, which aired four simultaneous games, including Buffalo vs. Jacksonville in southwestern Ontario, Montreal and Atlantic Canada, while BC viewers got to watch neighbouring Seattle take on St. Louis.

A CTV spokesperson says the reason the numbers are growing is because the net is now airing specific games of interest to specific regions. In week one, when CTV televised one game nationally, it averaged 255,000 viewers for the Denver-Buffalo match-up.

From Playback Daily