South Carolina’s win over Caitlin Clark and Iowa in Sunday’s NCAA women’s championship game had a preliminary audience average of 18.7 million on ABC and ESPN. The only sporting events in the US to attract a larger TV audience since 2019 are American football, the World Cup and the Olympic Games.
Viewing figures are expected to rise when Nielsen announces its final figures on Tuesday. Nielsen says the audience peaked at 24 million.
It is the most-watched basketball game since 2019, when the NCAA men’s title game between Virginia and Texas Tech averaged 19.6 million points on CBS.
Monday night’s men’s final between UConn and Purdue was shown on TBS and TNT. It’s possible this will be the first year the women’s title game draws a larger audience.
The 2015 Final Four game between Wisconsin and Kentucky on TBS is the only college basketball game on cable to draw more than 18.7 million viewers. That game had an average of 22.6 million. The 2022 men’s finals, which matched Kansas and North Carolina on TBS, averaged 18.1 million.
Clark and Iowa have the three largest audiences for women’s college basketball. The Hawkeyes’ win over UConn on Friday night averaged 14.2 million, and their April 1 win over LSU in the Elite Eight, a rematch of last year’s title game, drew 12.3 million.
Clark noted the total number of viewers on social media, posting “18. 7 MILLION” with a fire emoji on X.
The crowd for the national title game was up 89% from last year, when Clark and Iowa fell to LSU. And it was 285% larger than the viewership for the Gamecocks’ title two years ago, when they defeated UConn.
The last NBA game to draw at least 18 million was Game 6 of the 2019 Finals between the Toronto Raptors and Golden State Warriors (18.34 million).
The women’s final also had the largest audience for a Sunday afternoon sporting event on ESPN and ABC since Jan. 10, 2021, when an NFL playoff game between the Baltimore Ravens and Tennessee Titans averaged 24.82 million. ESPN and ABC do not have the rights to Sunday afternoon NFL games throughout the season, which routinely draw more than 25 million viewers on CBS and Fox.