Despite taking place in an earlier round and on cable, the much-anticipated rematch of Iowa and LSU not only outperformed their historic national championship meeting a year ago, but set a new all-time mark for women’s college basketball.
Monday’s Iowa-LSU NCAA women’s basketball tournament regional final averaged a 6.2 rating and 12.30 million viewers on ESPN, marking the largest NCAA women’s basketball audience ever recorded by Nielsen. The previous high was 11.84 million for the 1983 USC-Louisiana Tech national championship game on CBS, the first title game appearance by Cheryl Miller.
The 6.2 rating is tied with the 1992 Stanford-Virginia national semifinal as the highest for a women’s game since the 1986 Texas-USC title game (6.5).
The Hawkeyes’ win, which peaked with 16.1 million viewers, increased 20% in ratings and 24% in viewership from last year’s LSU-Iowa national championship game, which aired in a Sunday afternoon window on ABC and averaged a 5.2 and 9.92 million (including an ESPN2 simulcast).
Compared to the same Monday night Elite Eight window last season — South Carolina-Maryland — ratings and viewership increased more-than-fivefold from a 1.2 and 2.17 million.
In addition to setting a high for the women’s tournament, Iowa-LSU ranks as the most-watched basketball game on ESPN since Game 7 of the 2018 NBA Eastern Conference Finals (Cavaliers-Celtics: 13.6M) and the most-watched on cable since the 2022 NCAA men’s national championship on TBS, TNT and truTV (Kansas-North Carolina: 17.05M).
Over the past year, only four basketball games have averaged a larger audience: Sunday’s NC State-Duke men’s regional final (15.14M), last year’s UConn-San Diego State men’s national championship (14.69M), Game 5 of last year’s NBA Finals (Heat-Nuggets: 13.08M) and last year’s UConn-Miami national semifinal (12.85M). All of those games aired on broadcast television.
Beyond basketball, the game outdrew every Major League Baseball game in more than a year (2022 Phillies-Astros Game 6: 12.55M) and every NHL game in the past 53 (1971 Canadiens-Blackhawks Game 7: 12.41M).
As goes almost without saying, Iowa-LSU was the night’s top television program in viewership and adults 18-49. Its 3.1 rating in the demo was higher than all of the “Big Four” broadcast network programs combined (3.0).
UConn-USC led out with a 3.6 and 6.72 million, marking the fourth-largest audience for the women’s tournament dating back to 1995. The Huskies’ win trails only the two Iowa-LSU games and Saturday’s Iowa-Colorado regional semifinal (6.85M). Ratings and viewership tripled last year’s equivalent Virginia Tech-Ohio State game (1.3, 2.23M).
The full Elite Eight averaged 6.24 million viewers, up 184% from last year and a record. This year’s four games rank among the five most-watched regional finals on record.
