College basketball’s National Championship did well by cable standards, but was a modest draw historically.
Monday’s Kansas-North Carolina NCAA men’s basketball national championship averaged 17.05 million viewers across TNT, TBS and TruTV (18.1M including additional streaming data not tracked by Nielsen). Ratings were not immediately available. The Nielsen-only figure is down slightly from last year’s Baylor-Gonzaga title game on CBS (17.08M), but with the additional streaming audience included, viewership increased 4% year-over-year.
Compared to the previous National Championship games to air on cable, the Nielsen-reported audience increased 7% over Villanova-Michigan in 2018 but declined 4% from Villanova-North Carolina in 2016 (17.75M).
In what is almost certainly a first, the National Championship did not deliver the largest audience of the tournament. Saturday’s North Carolina-Duke national semifinal averaged 17.66 million Nielsen-reported viewers and 18.5 million including additional streaming data not tracked by Nielsen. The title game also trailed UNC-Duke in adults 18-49 (4.8 to 4.7), but matched the semifinal in 18-34 (3.5) and 25-54 (6.0).
On a Nielsen-only basis, the Jayhawks’ comeback win delivered the fourth-largest basketball audience in cable history behind North Carolina-Duke, Villanova-North Carolina in 2016 and the 2015 Kentucky-Wisconsin national semifinal (22.63M). With additional streaming data included, it ranks third behind UNC-Duke and Kentucky-Wisconsin.
If high for cable, the audience ranked among the lowest on record for a national championship. The Nielsen-reported audience is the third-lowest ever for the title game ahead of only last year and 2018. With the additional streaming viewership included, the game ranks as the seventh-least watched on record.
The full men’s NCAA Tournament averaged a combined 10.7 million viewers per window across CBS, TBS, TNT, TruTV, up 13% from last year and up 2% from 2019 (10.5M). With the caveat that out-of-home viewing was not tracked prior to last year, the average for this year’s tournament is the highest in five years (10.8M).
[Nielsen estimates from CBS/Turner, ShowBuzz Daily 4.5]
