The studio team at the Final Four featured host Elle Duncan (left), Andraya Carter, Chiney Ogwumike, Carolyn Peck and Aliyah Boston. ESPN Images
It was a coming out party for women’s basketball.
The 2024 NCAA final between South Carolina and Iowa averaged 18.9 million viewers on ABC, nearly doubling 2023’s 9.9 million, and breaking a record set less than 48 hours before.
And while the gameplay in Cleveland attracted the millions of fans tuning in, ESPN’s studio coverage around the tournament made headlines in itself.
Hosted by Elle Duncan and featuring Chiney Ogwumike and Andraya Carter, the Final Four broadcasts added Aliyah Boston and Carolyn Peck, bringing natural chemistry, whip-smart analysis and general entertainment to the women’s game. The on-site studio coverage began Friday and continued through Sunday’s championship.
Ahead of the Final Four games on Friday, ESPN hosted a digital-only show on the plaza outside Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, followed by an hourlong studio show, both inside and outside the venue.
In 43 degree weather, the hosts were just trying to stay warm with electric blankets, hand warmers and gloves. The weather had proved tricky — it had hailed that morning in Cleveland. ESPN had a backup plan to relocate the show inside the arena, should the Ohio climate not cooperate.
But at 5:58 p.m., it was go time. Duncan hyped the crowd behind her as a seasoned host. “Let’s go Hawks” chants reverberated around the plaza, indicating the massive Iowa fan base that had made the 8½-hour drive to Ohio.
“If all else fails, we vibe,” Duncan said to her co-hosts right before the show went live.
Boston was a newcomer to the crew but not to broadcasting, as the 2023 WNBA rookie of the year had spent the offseason doing college game analysis for Peacock. The Indiana Fever player and former South Carolina Gamecock had also come directly from the Team USA camp, preparing for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
The same production equipment used in “Monday Night Football” was taken to Cleveland.Mollie Cahillane
The successful studio shows drew big numbers, with Sunday’s pregame show on ABC averaging 2.9 million, and the postgame 1.4 million. Just a few years ago, those would have been viewership numbers for the championship game itself.
“I started on this project only last year, I’ve been seeing it grow and grow and grow, and having this platform and to showcase these women has been really exciting,” said Michelle Rosenhouse, the producer of the studio shows. “How much love we have for the game is really exciting.”
The NCAA and ESPN did not expect interest, attendance and viewership in the tournament to grow as quickly as it did, leading to some production frustration over not having a larger venue. Decisions on venues and host cities happen years in advance.
“I don’t think anybody could have anticipated that it was going to mushroom explode like it did like this,” said Kate Jackson, vice president of production at ESPN. “We’ve maxed out the thing, there’s no room for any more trucks in there,” she added, pointing to the arena’s loading dock.
That dock contained seven trucks and an edit trailer, including the entire production usually deployed for “Monday Night Football,” which Jackson described as the most technically advanced fleet of trucks the company has.
“This is a sport that’s just going to keep growing,” said Jackson. “What do we need to re-imagine? What do we need to think about mostly from a structural technical standpoint? How do we need to approach this in a different way so we can do more, serve more and just continue to be more for this championship?”
Those trucks are all connected to each other, and also to Bristol and Charlotte. For the Final Four, ESPN added an alternative cast featuring Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, which was produced from North Carolina.
“We knew that every single one of these women were very talented,” added Jackson. “They have a long history at the company. The honest thing about talent pairings is you don’t really know until you try. While we all thought it would be good, I don’t think anybody expected what we saw, and I would call that lightning in a bottle.”
ESPN had more than 350 credentialed staff on the ground, and that number expanded to more than 400 people when accounting for remote teams in Bristol and Charlotte.
“It’s bigger than almost anything else we do, outside of maybe the Super Bowl,” said Jackson. “College Football Playoff is maybe a little bit more, but you have to remember that those cameras have to cover an entire football field and not just an inside arena. In terms of the number of trucks that they have and things like that, this is probably pretty similar.”
It also wasn’t lost on viewers that five women of color hosted the studio show, and ESPN came in with a lot of intentionality behind that. According to a Sports Business Journal analysis of the 2022-23 NCAA Demographics Database (the most current data available), 42% of Division I women’s college basketball players are Black. That number jumps to more than 80% in the WNBA.
“It’s really important that the people who talk about the sport reflect the people who play in the sport,” said Jackson. “It was absolutely something that we thought about, but it was not a deciding factor. [The best people] go in the best positions, and these were the best people.”
Fans brought the energy to tapings of the show outside Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.ESPN images
This year, the programming team at ESPN was intentional about adding studio programming for the first and second rounds as well. It wasn’t until 2021 that all games of the women’s tournament were available on ESPN networks.
ESPN doesn’t have a dedicated studio show for college women’s hoops during the regular season, but does have regular in-studio wraps. SEC Network and ACC Network both have dedicated women’s hoops studio shows during the regular season. ACCN produces its “Nothing But Net ‘Ladies Night’” show on Thursdays and SECN has its all-day “SEC Now” studio coverage on Sundays.
“Like I said, I was here in 2016. The tournament didn’t look like this, play didn’t look like this. Our coverage didn’t look like this. This is a sport that’s been building for a very long time and this is just the coming out party,” said Jackson.
The numbers are there on the brand side as well.
Sources told SBJ that a 30-second spot in the Final Four cost marketers about $500,000 — still a far cry from the $2 million-plus for a slot in the men’s tournament. AT&T presented the postgame show, Dove the halftime show, and Capital One the pregame show.
ESPN said the women’s tournament drew an additional 15 sponsors this year, reaching nearly 100 advertisers. In 2022, women’s March Madness on ESPN had 14 sponsors and 22 advertisers.
“To see the response from viewers and fans in such a positive way for the studio is awesome,” said Jackson. “We live in a world where people can express their feelings in real time pretty regularly, and those feelings are rarely, ‘Hey, you guys are crushing it.’”
Disney is now gearing up for the WNBA Draft on April 15, taking place in Brooklyn and open to fans for the first time since 2016.
Iowa’s Caitlin Clark is pretty much unanimously predicted as the No. 1 draft pick, likely heading to the Indiana Fever.
Last week, the WNBA released its broadcast schedule for the upcoming season, and the Fever will have 36 of its 40 games on national television, including two games each on ABC and CBS.
Indiana’s home opener? A game between the Fever and 2023’s runner-ups, the New York Liberty and Sabrina Ionescu. Catch that on Amazon Prime Video, followed by an ABC broadcast two days later.
