One year after their national title game meeting neared ten million viewers, an Elite Eight rematch between Iowa and LSU blew past that mark.
Monday’s Iowa-LSU NCAA women’s basketball tournament regional final averaged a 6.2 rating and 12.30 million viewers on ESPN, marking easily 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 title game on CBS, and the previous high in the Nielsen people meter era (1988-present) was 9.92 million for last year’s LSU-Iowa title game.
For more details on the record audience, see the preceding link.
Later in the night, UConn-USC averaged 6.72 million — the fourth-largest tournament audience dating back to 1995 and the largest for a game that did not include Caitlin Clark.
As for the rest of the night in sports, FS1 drew 257,000 for a Rangers-Rays Major League Baseball game, while MLB Network drew 218,000 for late night regional action and 200,000 for a Rockies-Cubs matinee. In the NBA, Suns-Pelicans drew 194,000 on NBA TV.
Returning to women’s college basketball, ESPNU averaged 112,000 for Penn State-Villanova and 107,000 for Illinois-Washington State in a WBIT doubleheader. ESPNU also drew 27,000 for the Northwest Florida State-Hutchinson CC NJCAA women’s title game. Airing opposite ESPN’s Elite Eight games, ESPN2 drew just 44,000 for the high school basketball Jam Fest.
Monday, April 1 sports ratings
Updated chart:
Original chart below:
