For the second straight year, viewership plunged for the Big East title game on Fox Sports 1.
Last Saturday’s Villanova/Xavier Big East Tournament championship game drew 414,000 viewers on Fox Sports 1, down 41% from Providence/Creighton last year (704K), down 88% from Louisville/Syracuse on ESPN in 2013 (3.4M), and almost certainly a record-low. Keep in mind last year’s game was the most-watched college basketball telecast ever on FS1.
The Wildcats’ win was dominated head-to-head by the ACC title game on ESPN, which earned 3.5 million viewers. It also attracted less than half the audience of the American Athletic Conference championship the following day, also on ESPN (1.6M).
There were only two* Big East telecasts all season to earn at least one million viewers. Duke/St. John’s, which featured Mike Krzyzewski‘s 1,000th victory, drew 2.2 million on FOX in January. The previous month, ESPN2 earned 1.3 million for a Georgetown/Indiana game that led into — and briefly preempted — a highly rated Kentucky/Louisville tilt.
* A third game, Wisconsin/Marquette on CBS in early December, may also have topped the one million mark. Viewership was not immediately available, but it had a 0.7 final rating — and 11 of the 16 other games to earn a 0.7 rating during the regular season drew at least one million.
(Sat. numbers via ShowBuzz Daily)
