A pair of high-profile college basketball rivalry games delivered for ESPN and CBS over the weekend.
Saturday’s North Carolina-Duke men’s college basketball game averaged 3.43 million viewers on ESPN, up 14% from the rivals’ second meeting of last season (3.0M) and the third-largest audience for the matchup since 2019 — trailing only their first meeting this season, won by North Carolina at the buzzer (3.51M), and their second meeting in 2022, which marked Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game.
(Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is less than six months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes generally skew comparisons to past years.)
The Blue Devils’ comfortable win delivered the largest sports audience of a competitive day and the fifth-largest of the college basketball season. Duke has played in four of the top five, with their NFL-adjacent Thanksgiving Day game against Arkansas placing first (6.81M), their late-season non-conference matchup against Michigan third (4.32M) and their previous UNC matchup fourth.
North Carolina has played in three of the top five, the two Duke games and their own NFL-adjacent Thanksgiving matchup against Michigan State on FOX (6.50M).
Speaking of Michigan State, the Spartans’ loss to rival Michigan Sunday finished just outside of the top ten this season with 2.90 million on CBS — up 63% from the same matchup on the comparable weekend last season (1.78M) and the most-watched intra-conference Big Ten regular season game since 2019 (Indiana-Michigan: 2.99M).
Michigan-Michigan State delivered the sixth-largest audience of the season, taking a spot that belonged to their previous matchup in January on FOX (2.76M). Michigan State has played in three of the top seven games this season, the two against Michigan and the previously mentioned Thanksgiving matchup with North Carolina.
CBS finished the regular season averaging 1.43 million viewers, its highest mark since 2019. Beyond the standard caveats regarding Nielsen methodological changes, keep in mind that the network’s average includes the NFL-inflated Thanksgiving audience (as is also the case with FOX).
One rivalry game that did not perform was Auburn-Alabama, which drew 1.36 million on ESPN leading out of UNC-Duke — down sharply from the rivals’ meeting on the same weekend last year, an overtime matchup of top ten teams that aired in an afternoon window (2.1M). Auburn was unranked for this year’s game.
Elsewhere in the SEC Saturday, ESPN averaged 1.84 million for Florida-Kentucky — up from Arizona-Kansas last year (1.7M).
