In just the second round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, Caitlin Clark is delivering the kinds of audiences that were once reserved for a national championship game.
Monday’s Iowa-West Virginia NCAA women’s basketball tournament second round game averaged a 2.7 rating and 4.90 million viewers on ESPN, marking easily the largest audience on record for the women’s tournament prior to the Final Four. The previous record was set by Iowa’s first round game on ABC Saturday, which averaged 3.23 million.
Top NCAA women’s tournament audiences prior to Final Four
Iowa’s narrow win, which peaked with 6.4 million viewers, delivered the third-largest audience for any women’s tournament game in the past 20 years — since the 2004 UConn-Tennessee national championship (5.58M) — behind their national championship loss to LSU last year (9.92M) and their national semifinal win over South Carolina two days earlier (5.60M). Even the South Carolina-UConn national title game of two years ago, which was considered a strong draw at the time, averaged fewer viewers (4.85M).
Ratings increased fivefold and viewership sixfold over last year’s equivalent Louisville-Texas game (0.47, 783K).
Clark and the Hawkeyes are by far the biggest draw in the sport, but viewership has been historically strong for other games as well. Connecticut-Syracuse led in with a 1.2 and 2.05 million viewers, trailing only Iowa-West Virginia as the most-watched second round game on record. That record was set just a day earlier by Sunday’s LSU-Middle Tennessee game on ABC, which now ranks third (2.01M).
The year-over-year gains have been considerable. The USC-Kansas nightcap averaged a 1.1 and 1.76 million, up 95% in ratings and 87% in viewership from UConn-Baylor in a similar window last year (0.55, 943K), and even the 4 PM ET NC State-Tennessee game averaged a 0.75 and 1.23 million — up 79% and 75% respectively from Ohio State-North Carolina in the same window last year (0.42, 704K). ESPN also averaged a 0.50 and 827,000 for Notre Dame-Mississippi in a 2 PM ET window that it did not carry last year.
ESPN averaged 2.25 million for its five games Monday, up 180% from 804,000 for three games last year. Keep in mind that the three most-watched ESPN games aired directly opposite competing action on ESPN2, which averaged 544,000 for its three games (Indiana-Oklahoma: 617K; UCLA-Creighton: 509K; Utah-Gonzaga: 501K).
The full, eight-game slate averaged 1.60 million viewers across ESPN and ESPN2, and the full 16-game second round averaged 1.4 million — up 121% from last year and the highest average on record for the round. The five most-watched first or second round games on record have come this year. The full women’s tournament is averaging 812,000 viewers per game, up 108% from last year.
