The audience for the South Carolina-Iowa NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship climbed into football-esque territory on Sunday afternoon, with ABC/ESPN averaging 18.9 million viewers for the title game.
That’s easily a record for any women’s hoops game (and the third straight time an Iowa women’s game with Caitlin Clark has delivered such a record this postseason). South Carolina-Iowa is up 89% from last year’s LSU-Iowa finale (which at the time was a record-setting women’s audience in Nielsen's People Meter era).
South Carolina-Iowa is higher than every men’s NCAA Championship game dating back to Virginia-Texas Tech in 2019 on CBS (19.6 million). It’s also better than every NBA Finals game dating back to Warriors-Cavaliers Game 5 on ABC in 2017 (24.5 million).
Some other comps:
- South Carolina-LSU is just above the audience that ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU drew for the Washington-Texas matchup in the College Football Playoff semifinal this past season.
- The title game topped the Grammys this year (17.1 million), as well as the post-Super Bowl show on CBS (“Tracker” with 18.4 million).
- The women’s championship beat out the Alabama-Georgia SEC Football Championship in December (17.5 million), but is just below the 19.1 million for Ohio State-Michigan football.
- South Carolina-Iowa is better than every Kentucky Derby dating back to 1983, and every final round of the Masters dating back to when Tiger Woods won in 2001.
- The game topped all but two prime-time telecasts of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 (out of 17 nights).
