The Big East delivered its largest cable audience since moving to Fox Sports 1 and topped the sports viewership charts for Tuesday, February 20.
Tuesday’s UConn-Creighton men’s college basketball game averaged 709,000 viewers on FS1, marking the largest Big East audience ever on the network, and correspondingly, the most-watched Big East game since the conference broke apart and left ESPN more than a decade ago.
The Blue Jays’ blowout win was the most-watched sporting event of the day and more-than-doubled last year’s equivalent Marquette-Creighton game (298K). Butler-Villanova led-in with a far lower 227,000 and San Jose State-Boise State led out with just 127,000.
Placing a distant second among live sportscasts, ESPN averaged 570,000 for Baylor-BYU — down 48% from Indiana-Michigan State last year (1.09M). Arkansas-Texas A&M led-in with 501,000, down 45% from the Aggies against Tennessee last year.
Over on ESPN2, Syracuse-NC State drew 299,000, TCU-Texas Tech 224,000 and San Francisco-Saint Mary’s 163,000.
In women’s action, BTN drew 98,000 for Northwestern-Nebraska and 81,000 for Wisconsin-Minnesota.
Shifting to soccer, USA Network averaged 308,000 for a Brentford-Manchester City English Premier League match. A Mexico-Argentina Women’s Gold Cup match had 75,000 on ESPN Deportes, with English-language coverage on Paramount+, which is not Nielsen-rated. The United States-Dominican Republic match that followed averaged just 46,000.
Tuesday, February 20 sports ratings
Updated chart with UEFA on CBS:
Original chart below:
