It did better than the last time it aired on FS1, but Pac-12 Tournament ratings still plumbed the depths last weekend.
Last Saturday’s Arizona-USC Pac-12 Tournament final had a 0.35 rating and 612,000 viewers on FS1, down 72% in ratings and 71% in viewership from last year on ESPN (Arizona-Oregon: 1.2, 2.1M) but up 59% and 58% respectively from 2016 on FS1 (Oregon-Utah: 0.22, 388K).
The Wildcats’ win topped only 2016 as the lowest rated and least-watched Pac-12 title game since the tournament resumed in 2002. The three title games on FS1 rank as the three-least watched, with none of the three cracking a 0.5 rating or 700,000 viewers.
Under the Pac-12 TV deal, the championship game alternates between FS1 and ESPN each year. The two title games on ESPN have each scored at least a 1.2 and 1.8 million.
The Pac-12 championship was, by a wide margin, the least-watched of the major conference title games. It also trailed mid-major title games in the Mountain West (SDSU-New Mexico: 1.0, 1.6M), Atlantic-10 (Davidson-URI: 0.9, 1.3M) and West Coast Conference (Gonzaga-BYU: 0.6, 877K). Those games aired on CBS or ESPN.
Head-to-head, Saturday’s game trailed ESPN’s Top Rank Boxing coverage (0.7, 1.1M) but beat the Big West Championship on ESPN2 (CS Fullerton-UC Irvine: 199K).
[Wknd. numbers via ShowBuzz Daily 3.13]
