The Women’s College World Series ended with its largest audience yet for a second-straight year.
Thursday’s Game 2 of the Women’s College World Series Final (Texas-Texas Tech) averaged a 1.3 rating and 2.48 million viewers on ESPN and ESPNU, officially marking the largest college softball audience on record — surpassing the previous high set by last year’s clinching Game 3 between the same two teams (2.41M).
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 months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will skew historical comparisons, particularly to years before 2020. (Game 3 of the 2007 final, which averaged 2.33 million without any out-of-home viewing, would likely rank higher all things being equal.)
Most-watched Women’s College World Series games
The Longhorns’ win, which peaked with 3.0 million viewers, increased 16% in viewership over last year’s Game 2 (2.13M) — which aired opposite Game 1 of the NBA Finals (Pacers-Thunder: 8.9M). This year’s game faced lesser competition from the Stanley Cup Final (Golden Knights-Hurricanes: 4.7M).
Wednesday’s Game 1 of the series did face the NBA Finals, averaging a 1.0 rating and 1.89 million opposite the most-watched NBA game since 2019 (Knicks-Spurs: 16.9M). Though down from the past two years — neither of which faced NBA competition — it was the third-most watched Game 1 on record.
The full two-game series averaged 2.2 million, behind last year’s three-game set as the most-watched WCWS Final on record.
As previously noted, the WCWS was averaging 1.5 million entering the Final — up a third from last year and the highest average on record at that point of the event. Texas Tech-UCLA finished second for this year’s tournament with a 1.0 rating and 2.03 million the preceding Sunday night, ranking just outside of the top-ten WCWS games on record.
Both games of Texas Tech-Alabama drew 2.0 million last Monday, with a 1.1 and 2.00 million for one and a 1.1 and 1.96 million for the other. The Red Raiders played in the four most-watched games of the tournament and five of the top six.
