College softball and baseball are both seeing gains for their respective postseasons.
Through Monday, the Women’s College World Series was averaging 969,000 viewers across the ESPN networks — up 3% from last year, despite two fewer semifinal games.
Tennessee-Oklahoma last Saturday ranks as the most-watched game thus far with a 0.8 rating and 1.37 million viewers on ABC, up a tick in ratings and 9% in viewership from Texas-Oklahoma last year (0.7, 1.25M).
Monday’s Florida State-Tennessee semifinal placed a close second with 1.32 million viewers on ESPN. As previously noted, there were two fewer semifinal games this year as FSU and Oklahoma advanced on the first try Monday. Last year, both semifinals required two games.
FSU-Tennessee outdrew the average of last year’s two Oklahoma State-Texas games (1.28M), while Oklahoma-Stanford earlier in the day (844K) trailed last year’s two-game average for Oklahoma-UCLA (853K).
Returning to the weekend, ABC’s Washington-Stanford averaged a 0.8 (+12%) and 1.26 million (+19%) last Sunday — the third-largest audience of the tournament.
Also topping the million viewer mark were Stanford-Alabama on ESPN Friday (1.16M, +63% from last year on ESPN2), Washington-FSU on ESPN Saturday (1.11M, +16%) and Oklahoma-Tennessee on ESPN2 Sunday (1.14M, +10%).
Overall, nine of 12 windows have increased over last year. Viewership also increased for the previous week’s super regionals (+24%).
Shifting to the college baseball tournament, regionals averaged 264,000 viewers across the ESPN networks — up 37% from last year and the largest audience for the round since ESPNU became a Nielsen-rated network in 2010.
Tennessee-Clemson was the most-watched game of regionals with 736,000 on ESPN2 last Saturday, the second-largest audience on record for a game during the round.
