Women’s NCAA basketball title game outdraws men’s final in TV viewership

CLEVELAND — South Carolina’s 87-75 victory over Caitlin Clark and Iowa in the women’s NCAA championship game has achieved a pair of milestones.

It is the first time the women’s title game outdrew the men. It also was the second mostwatched non-Olympic women’s sporting event on U.S. television.

The Sunday afternoon game averaged 18.9 million viewers on ABC and ESPN while UConn’s 75-60 victory over Purdue in Monday night’s men’s final on TBS and TNT averaged

14.82 million.

The audience for Sunday’s game — where the Gamecocks capped an undefeated season by winning their fourth national title and denied Clark’s Hawkeyes their first — peaked at 24.1 million during the final 15 minutes. The 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup final between the U.S. and Japan averaged 25.4 million on Fox. That also was on a Sunday and took place in prime time on the East Coast.

“You’re seeing the growth in many places: attendance records, viewership and social media engagement surrounding March Madness,” UCLA coach Cori Close said. “I don’t think you can attribute it just to Iowa, though. A rising tide does lift all boats. But I think all those boats have been on many different waterways. The increase of exposure is getting rewarded.”

The record for the mostwatched women’s basketball game still belongs to the gold medal game of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics between the United States and Brazil, which averaged 19.5 million. South Carolina coach Dawn Staley was a member of the U.S. team.

Nielsen’s numbers include an estimate of the number of people who watched outside their homes, which wasn’t measured before 2020.

The audience for the national title game was up 90% over last year when Clark and Iowa fell to LSU. That also was the first time since 1995 that the championship was on network television.

The audience was 289% bigger than the viewership for the Gamecocks’ title two years ago when they beat UConn on ESPN.

“I had not seen it much [women’s basketball] before this year. I didn’t make it appointment television. This year, it was appointment television,” said former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson, who now runs his own sports television consulting company. “That’s what happened when you see those numbers. There were a lot of people making notes to sit down and watch the games.”

During the Final Four, Clark said the audience growth was benefiting all of women’s sports, not just basketball.

“I think you see it across the board, whether it’s softball, whether it’s gymnastics, volleyball. People want to watch. The research and the facts show that people love it,” she said.

Clark and Iowa have the three biggest audiences for women’s college basketball. The Hawkeyes’ victory over UConn on Friday night averaged 14.2 million, and their April 1 victory over LSU in the Elite Eight drew 12.3 million.