The Iowa-South Carolina women’s Final Four semifinal game this past Friday night was the most-viewed women’s national semifinal game of all time. That was just the beginning.
Two days later, on Sunday afternoon, the Iowa-LSU women’s national championship game pulled in massive ratings, becoming the most-viewed women’s college basketball game on record.
Our friends at Hawkeyes Wire have the details:
“The Iowa Hawkeyes and LSU Tigers each had so much star power and multiple reasons to tune into the Women’s NCAA Tournament title game. The evidence is undeniable that people tuned in and they did so in record-breaking numbers.
“Social media lit up from tipoff and continued to be buzzing until the final buzzer went off. The game had swings in it and so much action that it kept fans tuned in the entire time as Iowa tried to come back, but ultimately fell short to the Tigers.
“The ratings have come in for this game and they are astronomical in what they turned out as. This game set multiple records and had a viewership increase that is almost unheard of. The ratings came in at 9.9 million viewers with a peak viewership of 12.6 million viewers.”
For perspective on this:
Sunday's LSU-Iowa women's national championship averaged 9.9M viewers (fast-nationals), easily a record.
— Outdrew all of last year's NBA and MLB playoff games (**excluding the NBA Finals and World Series**)
— Nearly matched January's Rose Bowl (10.2M)https://t.co/aPDUATOPcp— Sports Media Watch (@paulsen_smw) April 3, 2023
The 9.9 million figure matched Game 7 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat last year. It outdrew the Sugar, Orange, and Cotton Bowls. That’s heavyweight stuff.
For some CFB perspective on 9.9 million viewers for the women's championship game.
That's more than last season's:
— Sugar, Orange and Cotton Bowls
— Big 12, Pac-12 and ACC title games
— Notre Dame-USC
— LSU-Alabama
— Ohio St-Penn St
— Bama-Texas A&M primetime on CBS— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) April 3, 2023
With Iowa and Caitlin Clark becoming TV ratings gold for ESPN and its television and streaming outlets, the sport of women’s basketball seems poised for a bigger television breakthrough, akin to what men’s college basketball experienced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Such a transformation in the economics of the sport would be crucial for women’s college hoops and for various athletic departments and conferences across the country. Rising interest in women’s college basketball on television would increase the market value of the women’s NCAA Tournament precisely when the NCAA is in a position to negotiate a new standalone deal with ESPN for media rights to the women’s half of March Madness.
USC and other schools in position to thrive over the next several years could make a lot of money in women’s basketball.
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