Viewership for the NCAA Women’s Final Four came nowhere close to last year’s historic levels, but still remained among the highest in the 30 years ESPN has carried the event.
Friday’s NCAA women’s basketball national semifinals averaged 3.9 million viewers across the ESPN networks, per Nielsen fast-nationals — trailing only the past two years as the highest average since ESPN began carrying the event exclusively in 1995. Viewership fell 65 percent from last year’s record-high of 11.0 million and a more modest 13% from 4.5 million in 2023.
Compared to the previous Final Four that did not involve Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes — three years ago in 2022 — viewership increased 44% from 2.7 million. [Related: What is a good audience for this year’s Women’s Final Four?]
UConn-UCLA led the way with 4.1 million, falling more than ten million viewers short of Iowa-UConn in the same window last year (14.4M) and also down 27% from Iowa-South Carolina in ’23 (5.6M).
The Huskies’ blowout win, which peaked with 4.7 million, nonetheless delivered the fifth-largest audience for a national semifinal in the ESPN era, behind last year’s two games, Iowa-South Carolina in ’23 and UConn-Minnesota in 2004 (4.6M).
Earlier in the night, South Carolina-Texas averaged 3.6 million — down by half from South Carolina-NC State last year (7.2M) but actually up from LSU-Virginia Tech two years ago (3.4M). The Gamecocks’ win, which peaked with 4.6 million, ranks ninth among national semifinals since ESPN acquired the rights — and second among early window games.
There was no set of circumstances in which this year’s audience was going to come close to last year — or two years ago — but this year’s games were not helped by the lopsided results.
