From Sports Media Watch, a one-stop page for sports ratings news.
Three of the six most-watched college basketball games all season aired last weekend, with FOX averaging a 1.4 rating and 2.76 million for Michigan-Michigan State last Friday night and ESPN drawing a 1.2 and 2.39 million for Kentucky-Arkansas and a 1.1 and 2.10 million for BYU-Kansas last Saturday — ranking fourth, fifth and sixth for the season.
The three games were also the most-watched of the season that did not have a direct lead-in from the NFL.
Men’s college basketball viewership is now up 31 percent across all networks this season. The ESPN networks are up 21%, with the ESPN flagship network up a more modest 6% to 913,000.
On the women’s side, last Sunday produced the two largest audiences of the season as Tennessee-UConn drew a 0.7 and season-high 1.21 million on FOX. ABC followed with 1.1 million for Oklahoma-Texas later in the afternoon. ESPN’s viewership for women’s games this season is up 39%.
Leading into the NFL, Saturday’s Women’s Champions Classic college basketball doubleheader averaged 617,000 viewers on FOX — up 20% from last year, when the games aired earlier in December and faced competition from the college football conference championship games.
It should be noted that FOX averaged a considerably larger audience of 2.23 million for UConn-USC on the same Saturday last year — but that game led out of the NFL, instead of leading in.
Airing immediately after the Packers-Lions NFL Thanksgiving game, Thursday’s Michigan State-North Carolina men’s college basketball game averaged 5.49 million viewers on FOX, per Nielsen fast-nationals — the largest college basketball audience on the network, surpassing the previous record of 5.18 million set by Michigan State-Arizona in the same post-NFL Thanksgiving timeslot two years ago.
Keep in mind that Nielsen has this year expanded its out-of-home viewing sample to 100 percent of markets, which could account for the 6% increase over 2023. Nielsen has also shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” methodology that combines viewership from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel, but the fast-national figures do not include that data.
As one would expect, the NFL lead-in was the primary reason for the outsized audience. Viewership peaked at 13.41 million in the opening quarter-hour immediately following football.
Figures for the other Thanksgiving sporting events — the three NFL games and the primetime Duke-Arkansas college basketball game on CBS — were not immediately available as of Friday night.
Fox Sports said Tuesday that the final of the College Basketball Crown — Nebraska over UCF — averaged 822,000 viewers. That figure surpasses this year’s NIT Championship (508K), but trails last year’s NIT final (1.14M).
The semifinals averaged 706,000.
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