NCAA Women
December 20, 2023
The landmark telecast on over-the-air ABC of the NCAA women’s volleyball championship match on an NFL Sunday afternoon established another record.
Ho hum.
No surprise there, given a season-long trend of sensational TV ratings for the fast-rising sport. Nonetheless, a title tussle between Texas and Nebraska that gave the all-important casuals ample opportunity to tune out almost certainly left some viewers on the table.
In the first airing of an NCAA final on one of the major broadcast networks, the 2-hour, 30-minute show was watched by a total-average viewership of 1.691 million, according to the Nielsen ratings as reported by the Sports Media Watch site, the most ever for a college volleyball match.
That beat the record for volleyball of 1.659 million, a “blended” number reflecting two Big Ten matches that aired at different times regionally on Fox on October 29 and which had an NFL game as a lead-in.
The total audience recorded on Sunday in Tampa, Florida, in the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship was a 112% improvement over the 796,000 that watched the Texas-Louisville final in 2022 on cable ESPN2, and 551,000 viewers in the key 18-49 demographic…
