College basketball’s championship week featured no shortage of viewership highs, albeit with a few caveats here and there.
Sunday’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament selection show averaged 6.41 million viewers on CBS, up 12% from last year (5.71M) and the highest average for the telecast since 2014. Viewership peaked at 7.1 million, up 15% from last year’s peak of 6.16 million.
Those increases are generally beyond the range that can be attributed solely to Nielsen’s methodological changes of the past year (specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to a new methodology that combines “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel).
Leading into the show, the Purdue-Michigan Big Ten Tournament final averaged 4.72 million — up 4% from Michigan-Wisconsin last year (4.53M) and the largest audience on record for the event. The previous high was 4.65 million for Ohio State-Wisconsin in 2013. It also ranks as the most-watched title game in any conference since CBS drew 5.51 million for the Kentucky-Mississippi State SEC Tournament final in 1996.
But note that those superlatives are almost certainly the result of Nielsen’s aforementioned methodological changes. The 4% increase over last year is well within the margin that can be explained by the shift to “Big Data + Panel,” and the increase over the 2013 final is almost entirely due to Nielsen’s inclusion of out-of-home viewing — which was not factored into the company’s estimates until 2020.
The Big Ten title game took its usual spot atop the championship week charts, and the tournament accounted for three of the top five audiences. In Saturday’s semifinals, Michigan-Wisconsin averaged 2.92 million and Purdue-UCLA drew 2.73 million — up 20% and down 10% respectively from last year’s semifinals (Wisconsin-Michigan State: 2.44; Michigan-Maryland: 3.02M).
Outside of the Big Ten, the Duke-Virginia ACC Tournament final was the most-watched game of the weekend with 4.1 million on ESPN Saturday night — up a third from last year (Duke-Louisville: 3.07M) and the third-largest audience for any ACC Tournament game. The Blue Devils’ win trails only a pair of Zion Williamson-era Duke games in the 2019 tournament, a semifinal against North Carolina (4.15M) and final against Florida State (4.06M).
The Arizona-Houston Big 12 Tournament final led in with 3.1 million, up 39% from the same matchup last year (2.24M) and officially a record (though the previous record-holder, Oklahoma-Kansas in 2002, aired well before the out-of-home era). Sunday’s Arkansas-Vanderbilt SEC Tournament final drew 2.6 million, actually down from last year’s 3.1 million for Florida-Tennessee, but still the second-largest for that game since 2017.
On FOX, the St. John’s-UConn Big East Tournament final drew 1.77 million — up 5% from St. John’s-Creighton last year (1.69M). That is officially the largest audience for the game since the Big East relaunched in 2013, though the increase is within the margin that can be explained by Nielsen’s shift to “Big Data + Panel” methodology.
As for the mid-majors, CBS drew 1.3 million for the Utah State-San Diego State Mountain West Tournament final on Saturday (-8%), 1.19 million for the VCU-Dayton Atlantic-10 title game on Sunday (-17%), and 931,000 for the Northern Iowa-Illinois Chicago Missouri Valley final on March 8 (-20%).
Shifting to the women’s game, the Texas-South Carolina SEC Tournament final was the top draw with 1.4 million on ESPN March 8 — up 8% from last year’s 1.3 million for the same matchup, and officially the second-largest audience for the game behind South Carolina-LSU two years ago (2.0M). But again, that is in the range that can possibly be explained by the shift to “Big Data + Panel.”
The Duke-Louisville ACC Tournament final drew 995,000 (+20%) and the West Virginia-TCU Big 12 Tournament final drew 853,000 (+12%), both the most-watched on record.
Finally, UCLA’s rout of Iowa in the Big Ten Tournament final drew 980,000 on CBS — down 32% from UCLA-USC last year (1.44M), to say nothing of Caitlin Clark-led Iowa against Nebraska two years ago (3.02M).
