The men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments weren’t the only winners this year. ESPN drew 1.41 million viewers for Seton Hall’s 79-77 win over Indiana State in the men’s NIT Championship on Thursday night, marking the event’s best finale since Dayton beat North Carolina in 2010 (1.84 million). Seton Hall-ISU is up 280% from UAB-North Texas on ESPN2 last year. This year was the first NIT final to top 1 million viewers since TCU-Georgia Tech in 2017, and the best NIT game in any round since 2013. For the complete NIT this year, ESPN networks averaged 449,000 viewers, marking the tourney’s best audience since 2016, with viewership up 18% from last year. That also included the four most-watched NIT games since 2017.
NBC drew 2.18 million viewers for the final round of the PGA Tour’s Valero Texas Open on Sunday, up 21% from last year’s final round. Akshay Bhatia won the lead-in event to the Masters. Saturday’s third round averaged 1.59 million, up 20%.
ABC drew 2.9 million viewers for the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship pregame show at 2pm ET on Sunday. As ESPN’s Flora Kelly pointed out, just three seasons ago, only one women’s college hoops game drew more than that figure over the entire season.
Friday night's "SmackDown" on Fox ahead of WrestleMania delivered 2.6 million viewers, which is the show's best audience since December 2022. That show's audience among adults 18-49 also was its best since December 2020. Meanwhile, Monday night's "Raw" last week ahead of WrestleMania drew 2.36 million viewers on USA Network, up 32% over the prior week. There also were 1.09 million viewers among adults 18-49 (the best in that demo since 2019).
The chart below lists viewership figures for select recent sports telecasts.
