While all ratings milestones come with a grain of salt these days, college basketball would seem to have real momentum heading into March Madness.
Men’s college basketball games averaged 433,000 viewers on Nielsen-rated television during the 2025-26 season, up 19% from last year. That increase is beyond the range that would be explained by Nielsen’s methodological changes of the past year, specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to a new currency that combines “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel.
The two most-watched games, and officially the two most-watched regular season games since 1993, both took place on Thanksgiving Day — airing adjacent to the two most-watched NFL regular season games on record. CBS averaged 6.81 million for Duke-Arkansas immediately following Chiefs-Cowboys (57.23M) and FOX averaged 6.50 million for Michigan State-North Carolina immediately following Packers-Lions (47.67M).
Those games helped both networks to multi-year highs this season. CBS finished the season averaging 1.59 million, up 12% and its highest average since 2018. FOX averaged 1.22 million, not counting Championship Week, up 38% from last year and its most-watched college basketball season.
The story was similar for ESPN/ABC, which notably did not meaningfully benefit NFL lead-ins. ABC averaged 1.7 million for its five-game schedule (+29%), which included a top-five matchup of Arizona and Houston (2.45M). The ESPN flagship network averaged 1.15 million (+10%) and aired half of the ten most-watched games this season — including five of the seven that did not have a direct lead-in from the NFL.
The full ESPN family of networks averaged 467,000 for the season (+22%). The regular season was the most-watched on the ESPN networks since 2014-15 and Championship Week (641K) was the most-watched since 2019.
(For all historical comparisons, 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 six months into “Big Data + Panel.” Those changes generally skew comparisons to past years.)
Eight of the ten most-watched games this season involved Duke or Michigan, including their head-to-head matchup on ESPN last month (4.32M).
Most-Watched College Basketball Games, 2025-26 Regular Season
Shifting to the women’s game, regular season coverage averaged 238,000 viewers across all networks — up 2% from last year. That is well within the range that can be explained by Nielsen methodological changes.
Viewership was up a sharper 17% on the ESPN family of networks, rising to 326,000. The regular season was the most-watched on the ESPN networks (333K) since 2008-09. (The height of the Caitlin Clark era at Iowa coincided with the end of ESPN’s Big Ten rights deal, meaning the network largely did not carry her most-watched regular season games.)
FOX had its most-watched season of women’s games, averaging 700,000 — though its 4% increase is within the margin that would be explained by methodology.
The top women’s game of the season was South Carolina-LSU in February, which averaged 1.7 million on ABC in a primetime Saturday window.
