Welcome back to “The Needle,” a new ratings-focused column on Sports Media Watch that will break down the numbers, attempt to put some context behind the data, and discuss broader trends in measurement and television viewing.
There is a basic truth about women’s basketball viewership that is apparently difficult to accept. Caitlin Clark is by far the biggest ratings driver in the history of the sport — a needle-mover on the level of a Tiger Woods, whose popularity exceeds her contemporaries by Secretariat-like margins — but she is not ‘the only thing keeping the lights on.’ Women’s basketball, college or pro, can exist and even succeed without her, if obviously at lower levels.
Take as an example the viewership for this year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament, in particular Sunday’s UConn-South Carolina national title game. The Huskies’ blowout win averaged 8.6 million viewers across ABC and ESPN, down a whopping 54 percent from Clark and Iowa’s loss to South Carolina last year, which drew a record-setting 18.9 million. It was also down from Iowa’s 2023 loss to LSU, though a far less sharp 14 percent from 9.9 million.
Yet the audience Sunday afternoon topped every other national championship in the Nielsen people-meter era (dating back to 1988), and nearly doubled the previous meeting of UConn and South Carolina three years ago (albeit exclusively on cable, in an era with less out-of-home viewing being tracked by Nielsen).
It is rare for a sporting event to attract a historically strong audience while still suffering a massive decline from the prior year, allowing for some diametrically opposed interpretations of the numbers.
Glass half-empty
The glass half-empty perspective will focus on the massive decline from a year ago. Most of the time a league enjoys outlier viewership, the following year is destined to decline sharply. Even by that standard, this year’s drop was particularly stark.
After record-setting audiences watched Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls clinch threepeats in 1993 and 1998, his absence the following year resulted in steep declines for the NBA Finals. Even so, Rockets-Knicks in 1994 declined only 34 percent (a Game 7 helping to cancel out the O.J. effect) and Spurs-Knicks in 1999 fell 45 percent.
Following the Red Sox’ historic 2004 World Series win, which still ranks as the most-watched Fall Classic since 1995, the White Sox’ similarly historic 2005 title sank to what was then a record-low — but fell only 32 percent. After the Cubs ended their World Series drought in 2016, Dodgers-Astros fell less than 20 percent the following year.
For perhaps the most relevant comparison, after Duke’s most recent appearance in the NCAA men’s national title game drew an audience of more than 28 million in 2015, the 2016 Villanova-North Carolina title game fell by more than ten million — but still only 37 percent. (A major mitigating factor was that 2016 was the first title game to ever air on cable.)
In none of those cases did viewership fall by fully half. Even in the COVID bubble, the football season Heat-Lakers NBA Finals fell 49 percent from the prior year; the Dodgers-Rays World Series fell 30 percent. (The Lightning-Stars Stanley Cup Final did fall more than 50 percent — 61 percent in fact — as did the final round of the Masters.)
There is little precedent for a major sporting event falling so sharply in one year. Even the 1998 Nagano Olympics, which followed the titanic ratings success of Lillehammer in 1994, declined just 42 percent (43.2 to 25.1 million).
Glass half-full
The glass half full perspective is simple. Four years ago, the national championship averaged barely four million viewers and that was a seven-year high. When UConn won its previous national title in 2016, fewer than three million were watching (albeit with no out-of-home viewing tracked at that time).
No matter how stark the year-over-year decline, there is little doubt that an audience of 8.6 million for women’s college basketball would have been considered pie-in-the-sky as recently as three years ago — even with the advantages of out-of-home viewing and broadcast television exposure.
It is also the case that 8.6 million is just an objectively strong audience for live sports (NFL aside). None of last year’s NBA or Major League Baseball playoff games averaged as large an audience outside of their respective championship series (topping out at 8.4 million for Timberwolves-Nuggets Game 7 and 8.3 million for Mets-Dodgers Game 1). The Daytona 500 has not had as many viewers in three years.
The full tournament averaged 1.2 million viewers per game, barely half of last year’s 2.2 million, but the second-highest average on record. The tournament averaged 983,000 viewers two years ago, 634,000 viewers three years ago and 546,000 four years ago.
Women’s basketball may never again see the Clark-fueled heights of a year ago, but nor has it retreated to the low expectations of the pre-Clark era. If this year represents a new status quo, it is a far stronger position for the sport than most would have thought possible.
Clark, of course, has much to do with that. Women’s basketball viewership was growing before her arrival, but she took it to the stratosphere. Even with most of last year’s record audience tuning out, enough returned to make this year’s tournament a far bigger draw than the pre-Clark norm.
If it seems impossible to give Clark enough of her due without some of her most ardent supporters insisting she is being sold short, consider an alternative possibility — that the offense taken is not because Clark is getting insufficient credit, but because the rest of the women’s game is getting any credit at all. To acknowledge that there is life after Clark is to acknowledge that there is any value to women’s basketball independent of her.
No Cinderellas or bluebloods necessary
For all the discussion about Cinderellas and bluebloods, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament ended with a matchup of Florida and Houston, who are arguably neither. (Yes, both have long histories of title contention, but blueblood status is reserved for the likes of Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina.) Yet more than 18 million viewers tuned in, the largest audience for a men’s college basketball game since 2019. (Out-of-home played a role, but even the household rating — which by definition does not include out-of-home viewing — was the highest in four years.)
No underdogs, no bluebloods, and still a five-year high? Perhaps an underrated factor driving viewership for the NCAA men’s tournament, particularly for the Final Four, is the having the best teams throughout the season playing close, competitive games.
If the men’s tournament starts to resemble the women’s, with fewer upsets in the early rounds and top seeds generally advancing to the national semifinals, it may not be the worst outcome for CBS and TNT Sports.
Plus: Ovechkin’s record goal, UFL, LIV Golf
Alex Ovechkin’s record-setting goal on Sunday attracted an audience of 905,000 viewers on TNT — including 164,000 for an “OviCast” on truTV — marking the largest audience for an indoor regular season game on TNT Sports. Strong as that audience was, it was another reminder of the difference between broadcast on cable. 24 hours earlier, ABC averaged a larger audience of 934,000 for Rangers-Devils.
In the NHL’s previous media rights deals, Sunday games belonged to NBC Sports. It is hard to imagine that NBC would have averaged fewer than one million viewers for that game, especially given that NBC actually did top the million-viewer mark for a live sporting event in that very window — drawing 1.4 million (albeit across both Nielsen and Adobe Analytics) for the Premier League Manchester Derby.
Of course, it should be noted that TNT’s telecast was nonexclusive — Monumental Sports carried local coverage in the Washington market. A figure for that telecast was not immediately available.
Two weeks is too early to start voicing concern about UFL viewership, but the early returns have been subpar. This year’s top audience (690,000 for the season opener) trails every single game from the first two weeks of last season. While a decline from year one is to be expected, the only other spring football effort to make it to year two — the 2023 USFL — still fared better despite direct competition with the XFL. (As most are likely aware, the current UFL is the merger of those two competing leagues.)
The PGA Tour had no trouble turning back LIV Golf last week, winning the head-to-head by a considerable margin, even as LIV scored its largest audience to-date (still less than half a million viewers at 484,000). The LIV audience was slightly below the average for TGL (498K), and while TGL never went up against the PGA Tour, it also never aired in a Sunday afternoon broadcast network timeslot either.
