If you are a sports media viewership nerd — (raises hand) — you start to think about what is possible. Seven million viewers? Eight million? Nine million? How high can Monday night go? We are in the middle of the greatest women’s college basketball tournament in history, and Iowa vs. LSU in the Elite Eight is the most anticipated non-Final Four game ever held. The game is a rematch of last year’s national championship, which averaged 9.9 million viewers and peaked at 12.6 million, the most-viewed women’s college basketball game on record.
Last year’s title game was a unicorn. It changed public perception, investment in the sport, everything. The previous record for an NCAA women’s basketball title game in the ESPN era (since 1996) was 5.68 million viewers for UConn’s title win over Oklahoma in 2002. (The previous all-time record, per Sports Media Watch, is believed to be 8.1 million viewers for a Virginia-Stanford national semifinal on CBS in 1992.) LSU’s win over Iowa obliterated it.
Now comes an Elite Eight doubleheader that highlights everything about the evolution of the sport. ESPN will air No. 1 seed Iowa against No. 3 LSU at 7:15 p.m. ET, followed by No. 1 USC vs. No. 3 UConn. The headliners playing in Albany and Portland over those four-plus hours —…
