Viewership metrics are an important marker in sports media, given money makes the world go round, but ratings stories in sports are usually adjacent at best to the play on the court or field. That’s not the case for this year’s women’s college basketball tournament. The viewership has rightfully been a massive story — and a subject of significance in an ascendent time for women’s basketball. Iowa’s win over LSU in the Elite Eight, a rematch of last year’s championship game, averaged 12.3 million viewers and peaked at 16 million viewers. It is the most-watched women’s college basketball game in history.
To give you some broader context on the numbers:
• The viewership was higher than every World Series game in 2023;
• It topped four of the five games of the 2023 NBA Finals;
• It beat the 12.1 million viewers for the final round of the Masters last year;
• Only five college football games in 2023 had higher viewership.
UConn’s win over USC in Monday’s other Elite Eight matchup drew 6.7 million viewers (and peaked at 10.4 million viewers), which would have surpassed every women’s college basketball title game viewership since 1996 except for last year’s championship game.
With that kind of viewership momentum, what can we expect from the Final Four? We…
