The final game of the Women’s College World Series delivered one of the event’s largest audiences on ESPN.
Tuesday’s Oklahoma-Florida WCWS Final Game 2 earned a 1.1 final rating and 1.7 million viewers on ESPN, up 22% in ratings and 22% in viewership from Oklahoma-Auburn last year (0.9, 1.4M) but down a tick and 7% respectively from Michigan-Florida in 2015 (1.2, 1.9M).
The Sooners’ title-clinching win earned the ninth-largest WCWS audience ever on ESPN (dates back to 1990), with both games of this year’s series ranking in the top ten. Five of the ten largest WCWS audiences have come in the past three years.
Overall, the two-game WCWS final averaged 1.7 million viewers on ESPN — up 24% from last year (1.3M) but down 13% from 2015 (1.9M), both of which went three games. To put the numbers in perspective, the three-game Women’s Final Four averaged 2.7 million across ESPN and ESPN2 in March.
[Tue. numbers via Programming Insider 6.7]
