It was a great game, but Virginia-Auburn was a subpar ratings draw.
Saturday’s Virginia-Auburn NCAA Tournament national semifinal scored a 7.6 rating and 12.97 million viewers on CBS, up 5% in ratings but down 1% in viewership from last year on TBS, TNT and TruTV (Michigan-Loyola Chicago: 7.2, 13.15M), and down 11% and 12% in both measures from 2017 on CBS (Gonzaga-South Carolina: 8.5, 14.68M).
The Cavaliers’ narrow win delivered the lowest Final Four rating on CBS since 2008 (Memphis-UCLA: 7.2) and the smallest audience since 2009 (Michigan State-UConn: 12.58M).
Across all networks, it ranks as the least-watched national semifinal since North Carolina-Syracuse in 2016, which aired on cable (12.94M). Going back further, it was the eighth-lowest rated semifinal since at least 1996 and the ninth-least watched since at least 2001.
Notably, the game had a lower rating than Duke-UCF in the second round of the tournament (7.8), though it did have a slightly larger audience (12.97M to 12.88M).
In what has been a year of higher ratings for the NCAA Tournament, Virginia-Auburn was just the seventh of 27 telecast windows to decline from last year.
Ratings in adults 18-49 (3.0) fell 14% from last year (3.5) and 23% from 2017 (3.9). The 3.0 is the lowest for a Final Four game in the demo since at least 2013, and almost certainly further back. It trailed such ratings duds as Villanova-Oklahoma in ’16 (3.1) and UConn-Florida in ’14 (3.4).
[Numbers from Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 4.9]
