Big East Tournament ratings will likely never return to pre-split levels, but viewership is headed in the right direction.
Saturday’s Villanova-Providence Big East Tournament final scored a 0.9 rating and 1.5 million viewers on FOX, up 29% in ratings and 37% in viewership from last year (Villanova-Creighton: 0.7, 1.1M) and flat and up 9% respectively from 2016 (Seton Hall-Villanova: 0.9, 1.4M).
The Wildcats’ win ranks as the most-watched Big East final since the conference relaunched and joined Fox Sports in 2013. It tied as the highest rated.
Moving the championship game from FS1 to FOX has had a significant impact on the numbers. The three title games on the FOX broadcast network have each topped the one million mark. By comparison, the two games on FS1 had fewer than 800,000.
Keep in mind the milestone numbers are still well short of the ‘old’ Big East. The last title game of the original conference, Louisville-Syracuse on ESPN in 2013, had a 2.1 and 3.4 million.
The Big East final ranked just seventh among conference championship games, trailing the ACC (2.0, 3.4M), Big Ten (2.0, 3.2M), Big 12 (1.7, 2.9M), SEC (1.5, 2.6M), American Athletic (1.4, 2.1M) and — head-to-head — the Mountain West (1.0, 1.6M). It did beat the Pac-12 Tournament final on FS1, which had a mere 0.35 and 612,000.
Overall, the complete Big East Tournament averaged 379,000 viewers across FOX and FS1, the highest average since the networks began carrying the event.
[Wknd. numbers from ShowBuzz Daily 3.13, Fox Sports PR/Twitter 3.13]
