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Caitlin Clark did not get her storybook ending Sunday afternoon in Cleveland, but women’s college basketball did when the viewership figures for the national championship game were released Monday.
South Carolina’s win over Iowa was seen by an astonishing 18.7 million viewers and peaked at 24.7 million. That’s an 89 percent increase from the 2023 title game and a 285 percent increase from 2022. ESPN says it is the most-watched basketball game (men’s or women’s, college or pro) since 2019.
The interest in Clark’s journey (and the sport at large) is something women’s college basketball has never seen before. Iowa’s 71-69 win over UConn in the national semifinals drew 14.2 million viewers and peaked at 17 million viewers. That set a new women’s college basketball viewership record, which lasted less than 72 hours. Iowa’s win over LSU in the Elite Eight averaged 12.3 million viewers and peaked at 16 million viewers. The Hawkeyes’ win over Colorado in the Sweet 16 averaged 6.9 million viewers. Iowa’s second-round win over West Virginia drew 4.9 million viewers on ESPN, which at the time was the third-largest audience for any women’s tournament game in the past 20 years. These were previously unheard-of numbers in the women’s game for those rounds.
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There were other epic viewership numbers during the tournament that did not involve Iowa and Clark. UConn has long been the sport’s viewership standard bearer and the Huskies’ win over USC in the Elite Eight drew 6.7 million viewers. Outside of last year’s championship game, which averaged a then-record 9.9 million viewers and peaked at 12.6 million, UConn’s Elite Eight win this year would have surpassed every title game viewership since 1996.
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To put the South Carolina-Iowa viewership in perspective, the game topped:
- Every World Series game since Game 7 of the 2019 World Series
- Every NBA Finals game since Game 5 of the 2017 NBA Finals
- Every Daytona 500 since 2008
- Every Masters final round viewership since 2001
- All but four college football games in 2023
Clark now moves to the WNBA — the league’s draft is April 15 — and her exit will unquestionably depress next year’s NCAA Tournament viewership numbers. How could they not? However, the millions of new viewers sampling the product will result in some people staying in 2025. Then add increased investment from ESPN and Fox Sports continuing what it did last year by placing women’s basketball on Big Fox. This tournament was an inflection point for women’s college basketball. The arrow is only going up.
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(Photo: Thien-An Truong / Getty Images)
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