Sports Ratings Tracker

Last Monday’s Princeton-Notre Dame NCAA men’s lacrosse national championship averaged 778,000 viewers on ESPN, up 37% from last year and officially the highest for the event since 2007.

(Note that changes in Nielsen methodology skew comparisons to past years, particularly those before 2020, when the company began tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates.)

The previous day’s Northwestern-North Carolina women’s national championship averaged 470,000, up 83% from last year and the highest on record.

Sunday’s LSU-Coastal Carolina Men’s College World Series Final Game 2 averaged 2.8 million viewers across ABC and ESPNU, down slightly from Tennessee-Texas A&M Game 2 last year (2.92M) but still the sixth-largest audience for an MCWS game on the ESPN networks.

The full series averaged 2.5 million viewers on the ESPN networks, down from last year’s three-game Tennessee-Texas A&M series (2.82M) but the most-watched sweep since the final shifted to a best-of-three format in 2003 (ten total series).

For more on the series, the full MCWS and the full NCAA college baseball tournament, see this article.

The NCAA outdoor track and field national championships averaged 341,000 viewers across ESPN and ESPN2, down 15% from last year but still the second-largest audience for the event since 2018.

Last Thursday’s primetime coverage, which featured day one of the women’s competition, was the most-watched of the event with 443,000 viewers.

This year’s tournament took place a week later than last year, meaning two nights aired opposite the NBA Finals instead of one.

Friday’s Texas-Texas Tech Women’s College World Series Final Game 3 averaged 2.41 million viewers on ESPN, making it the most-watched WCWS game on record — surpassing the previous high of 2.33 million for Tennessee-Arizona Game 3 in 2007. Keep in mind that out-of-home viewing was not tracked in Nielsen estimates until 2020.

Compared to the previous Game 3 — Oklahoma-Florida State in 2021, which aired in a Thursday afternoon window due to a rain delay — viewership unsurprisingly jumped 54% from 1.57 million.

Game 2 last Thursday averaged 2.13 million opposite the NBA Finals, up 4% from Oklahoma-Texas last year (2.04M) and the most-watched WCWS Final Game 2 on record.

Sunday’s North Carolina-Northwestern NCAA women’s lacrosse national championship averaged 257,000 viewers on ESPN, down 18% from Boston College’s comeback win over Northwestern last year (327K).

The full women’s tournament averaged 59,000 viewers, down 14% from last year, though semifinal viewership bucked the trend with an 18% increase on ESPNU.

Monday’s Cornell-Maryland NCAA men’s lacrosse national championship averaged 567,000 viewers on ESPN, marking the second-largest audience for the event since 2013. Viewership increased 7% from Notre Dame-Maryland last year.

Semifinal coverage the previous day averaged 282,000 (+13%), including 306,000 for Maryland-Syracuse.

The complete NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament averaged 135,000 viewers, up 31% from last year.

Last Sunday’s TCU-Loyola Marymount (Ca.) NCAA beach volleyball national championship averaged 219,600 viewers on ESPN — down 28% from UCLA-USC last year (306K) and down 42% from that same matchup in 2023 (380K). It was the first title game to feature neither the Bruins nor Trojans.

Despite the decline for the national championship, viewership for the full beach volleyball tournament was up 4%.

Saturday’s NCAA women’s gymnastics national championship, won by Oklahoma, averaged 1.01 million viewers on ABC — trailing only two years ago as the largest audience for the event since 2007. Viewership increased 18% from last year.

Across the national semifinal and championship meets, the NCAA women’s gymnastics nationals averaged 446,000 viewers — the highest average on record.

The men’s gymnastics national championship, which took place immediately after the women’s competition but aired on ESPN2, averaged 107,000.

Saturday’s Western Michigan-Boston University NCAA men’s hockey national championship averaged 594,000 viewers on ESPN2, up 30% from last year and behind only Quinnipiac-Minnesota two years ago (808K) as the most-watched title game since 2018 (Minnesota Duluth-Notre Dame: 653K).

The full, three-game Frozen Four averaged 372,000 — up 7% from last year and also the second-highest since 2018.

Monday’s Florida-Houston NCAA men’s basketball national championship averaged a 9.2 rating and 18.1 million viewers on CBS, marking the highest rated men’s college basketball game since 2021 and the most-watched since 2019.

The full, three-game Men’s Final Four averaged 16.4 million (+21%), the highest since 2017.

For full details on the numbers, see this article.

Sunday’s UConn-South Carolina NCAA women’s basketball national championship averaged a 4.3 rating and 8.6 million viewers across ABC and ESPN, trailing only the past two years (2024 South Carolina: 9.3, 18.9M; 2023 LSU-Iowa: 5.2, 9.9M) as the most-watched national title game in the Nielsen people meter era.

For more on the numbers, see this article.

Saturday’s NCAA wrestling final averaged 703,000 viewers on ESPN, up 72% from last year and the highest since 2017. Going back further, it was the third-most watched in the past 15 years behind 2017 (735K) and 2013 (860K).

Sunday’s Wisconsin-Ohio State NCAA women’s hockey national championship averaged 43,000 viewers on ESPNU, up 22% from last year. Wisconsin’s win peaked with 63,000 viewers.