On one of the biggest college basketball days of the year, an NC State upset of Duke topped the sports viewership charts for Thursday, March 14.
Thursday’s NC State-Duke ACC Tournament quarterfinal averaged 1.39 million viewers on ESPN, down 8% from North Carolina-Virginia in the same window last year (1.51M) but still the top sporting event of the day.
The Wolfpack’s upset win outdrew the competing Suns-Celtics NBA regular season game on TNT, which averaged 1.07 million — placing second for the night. Its Mavericks-Thunder lead-out averaged a combined 1.04 million across TNT (1.01M) and a betting-themed alternate presentation on truTV (34K). (TNT did not air any games on the comparable night last year, when it carried the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.)
Returning to college basketball, Virginia-Boston College led out of NC State-Duke with 888,000, basically even with NC State-Clemson a year ago (886K). ESPN also averaged 802,000 for North Carolina’s Noon ET rout of Florida State — up 62% from Iowa State-Baylor in the same window last year (496K) — and 541,000 for the TCU-Houston Big 12 Tournament game that followed (-23%).
Over on ESPN2, a Wake Forest-Pittsburgh ACC Tournament game led the way with 495,000 — down 3% from Duke-Pittsburgh last year (510K) — preceded by BYU-Texas Tech at 240,000 (-26%). In primetime, Kansas-Iowa State drew 469,000 (+26%) and Cincinnati-Baylor 404,000 (-34%).
The full day of Championship Week action on ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 651,000 viewers, down 3% from 671,000 last year.
Further down the dial, Ohio State-Iowa topped the Big Ten Tournament slate with 696,000 on Big Ten Network, followed by Indiana-Penn State at 620,000 — up 7 and 44 percent respectively from last year (Illinois-Penn State: 649K; Maryland-Minnesota: 431K). In the afternoon session, Wisconsin-Maryland and Michigan State-Minnesota averaged 316,000 (-49%) and 255,000 (-39%) respectively, dragging the four-game average of 481,000 below last year’s 499,000.
On FS1, the Big East Tournament quarterfinals averaged 330,000 — the highest average for the round since moving to the network. Viewership topped out at 417,000 for Providence-Creighton, followed by Villanova-Marquette at 384,000, the two largest quarterfinal audiences on FS1. Xavier-UConn had 270,000 and St. John’s-Seton Hall 236,000 earlier in the day. A Utah-Colorado Pac-12 Tournament game closed out the day with 279,000 despite a post-Midnight ET timeslot.
Rounding out the conference tournament action, the Atlantic-10 Tournament topped out at 173,000 for Loyola (Chicago)-St. Bonaventure on USA Network; the American Athletic Tournament topped out at just 53,000 for Wichita State-Memphis on ESPNU.
Outside of the hardwood, the day’s top sportscast was the opening round of The Players Championship on Golf Channel at 688,000 — down 10% from last year’s 764,000. Indian Wells tennis topped out at 265,000 for Carlos Alcaraz-Alexander Zverev.
On truTV, “TNT Sports Tonight” had just 9,000 viewers and “TNT Sports: The Line” followed with 8,000, both lows for the days-old programs. In the same 6 PM ET hour, ESPN Deportes was not far behind with 3,000 for “Cronometro” (the Spanish-language version of “PTI”) and 8,000 for Ahora o Nunca.
Thursday, March 14 sports ratings
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Original chart below:
