ESPN scored its largest men’s college basketball audience in three years for Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game at Duke.
Saturday’s North Carolina-Duke men’s college basketball game averaged a 1.95 rating and 3.98 million viewers on ESPN, marking the network’s largest men’s college basketball audience since the Zion Williamson-boosted 2019 ACC Tournament final (Duke-Florida State: 4.06M). It was also the most-watched Duke-North Carolina game since that 2018-19 season, when all three matchups topped the four million mark (4.34M in their first meeting, 4.16M in the second and 4.15 million in the ACC Tournament).
For the season, the Tar Heels’ win ranks as easily the most-watched game on any network — cruising past the previous high of 2.79 million for Gonzaga-Duke in November.
The season’s previous meeting between Duke and UNC was considerably lower at a 1.2 and 2.19 million. Duke has now played in three of the top six games this season.
Notably, North Carolina-Duke averaged a higher rating and more viewers than the Warriors-Lakers NBA game on ABC later in the night — a game that featured the league’s two biggest stars, LeBron James and Stephen Curry (1.8, 3.34M). For the day, it was television’s top show in adults 18-49 (1.2), 18-34 (1.1) and 25-54 (1.2), topping not just the NBA game but a new episode of NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
The late-running lead-in, Texas-Kansas, averaged a 1.1 and 1.91 million — the ninth-largest audience of the season. ESPN owns five of the top nine.
Most-watched college basketball games, 2021-22 season
[Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 3.8]
