The final game of Caitlin Clark’s collegiate career was the most-watched basketball game of any kind in five years.
Sunday’s South Carolina-Iowa NCAA women’s basketball national championship averaged a 9.3 rating and 18.88 million viewers across ABC (8.6, 17.48M), ESPN (0.8, 1.39M) and ESPN Deportes (0.01, 15K), marking the largest basketball audience (college or pro, men or women) since the 2019 Virginia-Texas Tech men’s national championship on CBS (19.63M).
The previous high over that span was 18.59 million for Game 6 of the 2019 Raptors-Warriors NBA Finals on ABC. (Keep in mind out-of-home viewing was not tracked in Nielsen final nationals until 2020.)
The 9.3 rating is the highest for any basketball game since the Baylor-Gonzaga men’s national championship on CBS in 2021 (9.4).
The Gamecocks’ win, which peaked with 24.1 million viewers in the final quarter-hour, delivered the largest non-football sports audience of any kind since the 2022 FIFA World Cup final on FOX and Univision (22.32M). That is the only sportscast outside of football and the Olympics to average a larger audience dating back to 2019. (Keep in mind World Cup figures include pre-match coverage.)
Ratings increased 80% and viewership 88% from last year’s LSU-Iowa title game, which at the time was the most-watched women’s college basketball game of the Nielsen people meter era (1988-present) with a 5.2 and 9.92 million. Compared to South Carolina-UConn two years ago — the final title game to air exclusively on cable for the foreseeable future — ratings and viewership increased threefold from a 2.7 and 4.85 million.
Viewership for the national title game has now increased in five consecutive years. In the first year of that streak, 2019, Baylor’s national title victory over Notre Dame averaged a mere 3.54 million.
The national title game was Iowa’s third-straight to set the all-time viewership record for women’s college basketball. Their Elite Eight win over LSU set the mark with 12.3 million last Monday and their Final Four victory over UConn drew 14.2 million on Friday, both on ESPN.
Outside of the NFL, it is rare for any matinee sporting event to deliver an audience of such size. With the caveat that out-of-home viewing was not tracked prior to 2020, it was the most-watched basketball game to air outside of primetime (7 PM on Sundays, 8 PM on all other days) since Michigan-Cincinnati in the 1992 Men’s Final Four, a game that began at 6 PM ET (19.88M).
Is there a way to dump this data via CSV? I know Iowa helped drive these ratings, but I am curious as to how much they contributed to not only the NCAAT, but all season..
Iowa vs LSU at 12.3M was ~2x that of USC vs UCONN at 6.7 and Iowa vs UCONN at 14.4M was >2x of NC St vs SC. If we take Iowa out of the equation, I am curious how these numbers compare to prior years. I am curious as to viewership of Iowa’s opponents all year. Thanks.
Will be interested to see the demographic breakdown between the games on Friday and Sunday to see if there were any noticeable trends.
Still spectacular numbers even though it didn’t get over 20 million, the peak was at 24 million. The game itself was rather disappointing too because South Carolina dominated the last 3 quarters of the game and it looked over by the 4th. If Clark was up in that game and was going to win, I think it could’ve gotten over 20 million. I knew early in the 4th, that South Carolina had it in the bag, and lost interest.
I said this the other day that starting the game around 5pm or 6pm, might’ve been more idea. I remember the 2015 Women’s Final aired at 6pm on FOX that year and they got 25 million.
Usually whenever we saw big Sunday numbers during the NBA’s heyday, the games started between 5pm and 8pm. This worked for the NBA because their games aired deeper into the spring season where they wouldn’t compete against people who were outside earlier in the afternoon. People would flock back home and get ready for the next day of work or school. If the game ended between 7pm and 9pm, I think you’d get those NFL overrun type numbrs that’d hit between 20-25 million.
Another thing about the Caitlin Clark story that’s missing is she had no real budding rival outside of Angel Reese, but she needed like another great basketball player to feed off of like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had for each other coming out of college into the NBA. Obviously, this whole thing with Caitlin is built off of colorism, politics, and religion, but I truly think if Caitlin had a rival who was really good in the sport and they met up in the final, this thing could’ve really pushed to 30 million, and I’m not kidding.
I almost wish Caitlin had one more year in college because she’s even more established now nationwide than she was coming into this season. Then you’ve could’ve built up this whole revenge meeting between Clark and South Carolina in next year’s final.
Let’s see how Clark does for the WNBA, I think she’s gotten a lot of new fans into the sport, and even though it’s not going to be as big as this college season, I do think the WNBA will finally get over 1 million viewers. People are still gonna want to watch Clark and see how she does on the pro level.
Come on you guys. They just got an epic rating. Epic. They nearly doubled last year’s number
Ohio State Michigan football got 19.05 million for a noon start.
This is fantastic
Agree with both of you (HoopsFan77 and ESL) and Jeffrey Hirshman in the previous post. That game should have started at 5 or 6 pm. The rating is a bit disappointing considering the friday number on cable only and that it was a semi final. I blame the time slot. Women basketball goes by fast(one of the thing l like about it), 2 hours max usually, so they should have started the game later.
The beauty of the 4:15 or 4:30 pm NFL window is that the games in that window finish between 7 and 7:45pm when most people are at homes on a Sunday night on the east coast. Also, maybe Jon had our hope too high with his 24 millions prediction for the final:) He is usually bearish with his predictions, should have stay that way Jon:)
Anyway, incredible ratings for women basketball, even accounting for population growth. Next year ratings should be judge on the 2021 and 2022 ratings only in my opinion. We will really see if there is real growth of the viewership. There will probably never be another Caitlin Clark in women basketball and probably in sports. The only other sport properties that could give us a real surprise in ratings are USA women or men national teams in a World Cup. I could see both teams get really great numbers in a final or a semi final in a prime time spot and depending on the opponent.
I will say — I knew going in that 24 million was probably a bit much, but I would have expected at least 20. I think based on that Friday number, I would have considered 20 to be bearish. Still an excellent number of course (and would have been helped by a later timeslot).
It would have been much bigger at 6pm
Disappointing number. I think most were expecting at least 20 million.
Agreed. I think the weather had a bit to do with it. Beautiful Sunday afternoon in most parts of the country. People looking to get a spring day outside. Wonder if they put this game on at 5pm et if numbers would have been higher?
3pm on a Sunday is awesome time