If extraordinary on the court, UConn’s classic win over Duke was a pretty average television draw in its highly-rated window.
Sunday’s UConn-Duke NCAA men’s basketball tournament regional final averaged 13.4 million viewers on CBS, up 15% from Michigan State-Auburn last year (11.7M) and the third-largest audience for any individual game prior to the Final Four since the tournament returned from hiatus in 2021.
That kind of performance is to be expected for the late Sunday Elite Eight window, which in the five years since returning to the schedule in 2022 accounts for each of the five largest audiences outside of the Final Four since the tournament resumed — even including relative duds like Miami-Texas three years ago (11.3M). Comparably forgettable games have averaged a larger audience in that window, most notably North Carolina’s rout of 15 seed Saint Peter’s four years ago (13.6M).
The Huskies’ dramatic win, which peaked with 18.9 million viewers, actually ranks on the low side by the standards of that late Sunday window — topping only Auburn-Michigan State last year (11.7M) and the aforementioned Miami-Texas as the least-watched in the past decade (eight telecasts). Keep in mind that Duke led by 15 at halftime and by as many as 19 before UConn came back.
The two previous times Duke played in the late Sunday window, the audience was noticeably stronger — 15.1 million for a 2024 loss to NC State (which was boosted by Easter Sunday out-of-home viewing), and 16.2 million for a loss against Michigan State in the Zion Williamson year of 2019 (before Nielsen began tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates).
Last year, Duke played in the late Saturday window, attracting an audience of 9.8 million for a win over Alabama on TBS.
Additional individual game figures for Elite Eight weekend were not immediately available, but CBS and TNT Sports said in a Tuesday press release that all Sweet 16 and Elite Eight telecast windows increased over last year.
That includes Friday’s early Sweet 16 window — Duke-St. John’s on CBS and Michigan-Alabama on TBS — which averaged a combined 14.2 million, up 38% from last year and the highest for that window since 1992. As previously noted, this is the first NCAA men’s basketball tournament since Nielsen shifted to a new methodology that combines “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes to its traditional panel.
In addition, it is just the sixth tournament since Nielsen began tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates in 2020 and the second since it expanded that out-of-home sample to cover 100 percent of markets in the lower 48 states.
Those changes are unlikely to account for a 38 percent year-over-year increase, but would make a difference in comparisons to most past years, particularly those prior to the inclusion of out-of-home viewing in 2020.
The full NCAA men’s basketball tournament is averaging a combined 10.3 million per window across CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, up 9% from last year and the highest at this point of the tournament since 1993.
