The Men’s College World Series concluded a year of milestones for NCAA championships. Here is a look at how the various NCAA title games stack up.
Tier #1: Football and basketball
The least-watched college football national championship of the BCS era — Georgia’s 65-7 obliteration of TCU — was not even the most-watched of the College Football Playoff, trailing the two semifinals on New Year’s Eve. Nonetheless, its audience of 17.22 million comfortably outpaced every other NCAA event in the 2022-23 academic year.
The national championship of men’s college basketball also hit a record-low this season, as UConn’s ho-hum triumph over San Diego State averaged 14.69 million on CBS — still the second-most watched national championship of the year.
It is not too surprising that college football and men’s basketball ranked first and second despite both hitting record-lows, as those are the two highest-revenue sports that typically operate in a class by themselves. This year, a third sport joined them in what this article will term ‘tier one’ of national championship viewership: the women’s college basketball title game. LSU’s win over Iowa averaged 9.9 million viewers on ABC, easily a record-high and more-than-double the prior year audience of 4.9 million.
Tier #2: Baseball, softball and more
Outside of football and basketball, no national championship — or NCAA event total — averaged even four million viewers. Game 3 of the Men’s College World Series Final (LSU’s 18-4 rout of Florida) was the most-watched of these games with 3.59 million across ESPN and ESPNU, the highest ever for the event on the ESPN networks. The MCWS was the only NCAA event outside of baseball or basketball to crack the two million mark, with the first two games of the Final and a pair of preliminary round games also crossing that threshold.
Just below that two million mark, Game 2 of the Women’s College World Series Final (Oklahoma-FSU) ranks fourth among national championships with 1.86 million.
Beyond football, basketball, baseball and softball, only two other NCAA events all year cracked the one million mark. One was the South Dakota State-North Dakota State FCS football national championship, which averaged 1.07 million viewers on ABC in January. (Viewership declined sharply from last year, as the game aired on an NFL Sunday.)
The other was the women’s gymnastics national championship in April, which averaged 1.02 million on ABC — the largest audience for the event since 2007, and the first college gymnastics meet to hit the million viewer mark since 2011.
Tier #3: D-II hoops and more
Technically, one other event hit the million viewer mark (if one rounds up). The Division II men’s basketball championship averaged 998,000 viewers on CBS. Nova Southeastern’s win over West Liberty outperformed any number of more-prominent Division I title games, including the national championships of men’s hockey (Quinnipiac-Minnesota: 808K), women’s volleyball (Texas-Louisville: 786K) and men’s lacrosse (Notre Dame-Duke: 757K).
Keep in mind the D-II basketball championship aired on CBS, while the three other events aired on ESPN or ESPN2. On Thursday, it was announced that the women’s volleyball championship — which this season posted a viewership decline on ESPN2 — will air on ABC this coming season (December 17 at 3 PM ET).
It should be noted that the men’s hockey and men’s lacrosse title games were the most-watched since 2011 and 2007, respectively.
Tier #4: and the rest
None of the other national championships averaged even 500,000 viewers, with wrestling coming closest at 454,000 — the lowest for that event in more than a decade. The beach volleyball national championship (380K), men’s NIT final (370K) and women’s lacrosse title game (316K) were the only other events to top 300,000 viewers.
From there, the D-II and D-III football championships (151K and 206K respectively), men’s and women’s golf finals (163K and 108K respectively), men’s soccer final (Syracuse-Indiana: 137K) and outdoor track & field championships (152K, 227K and 176K) were the only other events in the six figures.
Three national championships fell below the 100,000 viewer mark, with women’s soccer (UCLA-UNC) at 76,000, women’s hockey (Wisconsin-Ohio State) at 53,000 and women’s water polo (USC-Stanford) at just 17,000. Not surprisingly, all three of those events aired on ESPNU.
A number of national championships did not air on Nielsen-rated television, including the men’s volleyball final on ESPNEWS and men’s gymnastics on FloSports.
NCAA national championship viewership, 2022-23 academic year
