Welcome to “The Needle,” a new ratings-focused column on Sports Media Watch that will break down the numbers, attempt to put some context behind the data, and discuss broader trends in measurement and television viewing.
What is a good audience for the post-Clark Women’s Final Four?
There was never any question that the NCAA women’s basketball tournament would fail to sustain the historic pace set last year, when Caitlin Clark and Iowa generated audiences far above even the highest expectations. The only question was whether viewership would crash all the way back to earth, or remain elevated as compared to the pre-Clark status quo.
Last year, Iowa-LSU in the Elite Eight averaged 12.2 million viewers on ESPN, an all-time record for domestic women’s basketball (later surpassed in the national semifinals and national championship). This year’s top Elite Eight game (UCLA-LSU) averaged 3.4 million. That is a bonafide plummet of nearly nine million. Nonetheless, it is still a larger audience than any Elite Eight game outside of last year, including in 2023 when Clark first broke through into the national consciousness.
Indeed, last year’s overperformance was so dramatic that most observers may not remember what success looked like even two years ago. Clark and Iowa attracted 2.5 million for their 2023 regional final against Hailey Van Lith and Louisville, the ‘you can’t see me game’ that sparked Angel Reese’s response at the end of the national championship — arguably the catalyst for the following year’s historic ratings growth. Three of this year’s four Elite Eight games outpaced that number, the lone exception being Van Lith-led TCU against Texas (2.3M).
Keep in mind that those 2023 numbers were historically strong at the time. Iowa-Louisville was the most-watched tournament game on record outside of the Final Four. The Hawkeyes’ second-round win over Georgia was the most-watched opening weekend game on record, and it had only 1.5 million. (UConn’s rout of South Dakota State this year had 1.7.)
One could counter by noting that the Clark effect had not reached its full potential until the ’23 Final Four, when Iowa’s upset of South Carolina was the most-watched game, including national championships, in nearly two decades — surpassed two days later by their loss to LSU, which obliterated all expectations with nearly ten million. It is unlikely that this year’s tournament will be able to continue outpacing two years ago into the Final Four.
If this year’s national title audience falls about 60 percent from last year, and 20 percent from two years ago, can it really be considered anything but a failure?
Of course. When a single athlete affects viewership in such a dramatic way, the impact is finite and the real question is how much of their unique appeal can be sustained in their inevitable absence. That is especially the case in college, where star athletes cycle out within a presidential term.
The most important contribution Clark made to the popularity of the women’s game was not raising the ceiling — as she did so memorably last season — but raising the floor.
When the full Elite Eight averages more viewers than the single-game record of two years ago, it is clear that the status quo has been reset. The heights of 2024 are unlikely to ever be seen again — much as the NBA will never again see the heights of 1998 or golf the heights of 1997 — but viewership is not ‘back to square one.’
Last year, Iowa’s national semifinal against UConn averaged 14.4 million and their national championship loss to South Carolina set the all-time viewer mark with 18.9 million. Viewership for this year’s national title game could drop 47 percent and still rank as the second-best in the Nielsen people-meter era. It could drop 58 percent and still rank as the third-best. It would have to drop 74 percent — losing nearly three-quarters of last year’s audience — to fall to the level of three years ago, the last time Clark and Iowa failed to make the final.
It is clear that 1) viewership is going to be down big, and 2) viewership is still going to rank well historically. Truth be told, neither of those facts say much about the status of this event. Neither the pre-Clark norm nor the Clark-era highs are representative measuring sticks for a sport that has quite clearly grown in popularity, but not nearly as much as last year’s performance would indicate. So what would be a good turnout for this year’s Final Four?
Here are the criteria. Forget trying to match Caitlin Clark-era viewership — and for the national title game that means both last year and 2023 — but the audience must surpass 2022 by a sizable margin. That year’s South Carolina-UConn matchup averaged 4.85 million on ESPN in primetime. Given the increase in out-of-home viewing, the sport’s evident popularity bump and increased national exposure (the 2022 title game was the last to air exclusively on cable), it is not asking much to comfortably surpass that figure.
Entering the Final Four, this year’s tournament is averaging 967,000 viewers per game, down 31 percent from last year, up 47 percent from 2023, and up a whopping 108 percent from 2022. Sustaining that gain over ’22 would mean an audience of more than ten million for the title game, which does not seem particularly likely.
An increase of 25 percent over 2022 would mean a national title audience just north of six million, trailing only the two Clark games as the most-watched in the ESPN era, but probably on the low end of reasonable expectations. Anything close to the pre-Clark people-meter record — 7.8 million for the 1993 national title game — would require a 50-60 percent jump over ’22, which is possible but a lot to ask. Perhaps something in the mid-high 6.0 range, for a jump of 34-40 percent, is the proverbial sweet spot.
Can this year’s games get to that level? A 2022 rematch between defending champion South Carolina and perennial power UConn is the best-case scenario. UCLA and Texas are two of the preeminent college sports brands, but neither team would rank among the most-popular women’s basketball programs, at least not yet. If the Gamecocks and Huskies can win close, competitive games Friday and set up a national title game matchup on Sunday, it would be fair to expect audiences in the high-three or low-four million range for the national semifinals, and perhaps a national title game audience around the high-six or low-seven million mark.
In a solid year for golf, is this the week LIV breaks through?
For all the talk of the urgent need to reunify golf, the television ratings do not indicate any emergency. PGA Tour viewership this season is up on both CBS and NBC, with the latter announcing this week that it has posted increases for six-straight tournaments — and while the numbers do not compare as favorably to two years ago, a winning streak is a winning streak.
Even the new, non-traditional TGL has a positive ratings story to tell, having averaged half a million viewers (498K) for its inaugural season, up 10% from the equivalent programming windows on ESPN last year. (Primetime windows averaged 655,000, up 2%.) TGL notably had a median age of 52, far younger than the PGA Tour (63) or LIV (61) and on par with more traditionally young-skewing properties like the Premier League (52). (In the new Nielsen “big data” measure that will become the official currency later this year, and figures to benefit younger-skewing properties, TGL averaged 610,000 viewers.)
On the outside looking in is LIV Golf, the breakaway Saudi-backed venture that has been the talk of the sport the past three years. In two seasons on CW, LIV Golf never once made a dent in the ratings, and nothing has changed in year one of the series’ new deal with Fox Sports. Whenever a LIV viewership figure surfaces — and they are always too low to merit a press release — the number tends to be far below what one would typically expect of live sports.
That could change this week, as LIV has a rare American event, on a familiar course — Doral, where the PGA Tour played for years — in a major broadcast network window. There is no chance it will catch the PGA Tour, but it seems like a virtual lock that viewership will be the highest yet for the series on a relatively light Sunday that will be dominated by the NCAA women’s basketball title game.
