The college basketball season ended on a strong note on the court — and in the ratings — as a compelling national championship delivered for CBS.
Monday’s Florida-Houston NCAA men’s basketball national championship averaged a 9.2 rating and 18.1 million viewers on CBS, marking the highest rated men’s college basketball game since the 2021 national title game (Baylor-Gonzaga: 9.4) and the most-watched since the 2019 edition (Virginia-Texas Tech: 19.4M).
The previous highs were set in the 2022 Final Four, a 9.1 rating for the Kansas-North Carolina title game and 17.7 million viewers for the Duke-North Carolina semifinal. (As Nielsen out-of-home viewing covered fewer markets in 2022, it is possible that Duke-UNC would still hold the top spot all things being equal.)
The Gators’ narrow win, which peaked with 21.1 million, delivered the third-largest basketball audience of any kind in the past five years — behind only last year’s South Carolina-Iowa women’s national title game (18.9M) and last year’s United States-France men’s Olympic gold medal game (20.3M across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics).
Ratings increased 21% and viewership 22% from UConn-Purdue on the TNT networks last season (7.6, 14.8M). Compared to the previous title game on CBS, UConn-San Diego State two years ago, this year’s game increased 18 and 23% respectively from a 7.8 and 14.7 million.
The full, three-game NCAA Men’s Final Four averaged 16.4 million viewers, up 21% from last year and the highest since 2017. The full NCAA men’s basketball tournament averaged a combined 10.2 million viewers per window across CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV (+3%).
There was concern throughout the NCAA men’s tournament that a lack of upsets and Cinderella teams would sap interest in the event, and the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight did nothing to quell those notions — as a run of blowouts resulted in viewership that was mixed at best. But the Final Four, consisting solely of #1 seeds for just the second time, produced three compelling, tightly contested games, and viewers apparently responded.
It should be noted that while both Florida and Houston are major conference #1 seeds with long histories of contention, neither is a traditional ‘blueblood’ along the lines of a Duke or Kentucky. It may be the case that the biggest factor driving tournament viewership is neither the Cinderellas nor the bluebloods, but high-quality games played by the best teams throughout the season.
