The NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Outrates Men’s For First Time

For the first time in 42 years, the NCAA women’s basketball final had more viewers than the men’s.

The women’s national championship game between South Carolina and Iowa drew 18.9 million viewers, with a peak of 24.1 million in the last 15 minutes, according to Nielsen. It was the most viewed women’s collegiate basketball game in history, with the previous year’s 9.9 million viewers more than doubled.

About The NCAA Women’s Basketball Final

On Monday, the University of Connecticut’s victory over Purdue in the men’s final drew 14.8 million viewers, Nielsen said. That was up a smidge from the 14.7 million who watched last year’s men’s championship game, but fell 4 million viewers short of the women’s final.

The biggest reason why the women ncaa basketball final outrated the men this year: Iowa sensation Caitlin Clark, who scored 30 points in the Hawkeyes’ 87-75 defeat by the undefeated Gamecocks.

Clark captivated fans all year, setting records on the court and driving the women’s game to viewership records throughout the regular season and the March Madness tournament. Clark finished the 2023-2024 season as the highest scoring collegiate basketball player in history, outpacing Louisiana State sensation (and future NBA legend and Hall of Famer) Pete Maravich, who had set the previous record in 1970.

Clark had been playing with a chip on her shoulder all season after her Hawkeyes lost in the finals the previous year to LSU — a team she and Iowa vanquished earlier in the tournament. She is widely expected to be the top pick in the WNBA draft next week.

Nielsen’s numbers include an estimate of the number of people who watched outside their homes, which wasn’t measured before 2020. Due to cord-cutting, the in-home audience has steadily declined annually.

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.

To put the women’s championship game viewership in perspective, it outrated every 2023 World Series game and every NBA finals game from last year, according to Nielsen.

The success of this year womens ncaa basketball tournament led to many hot takes in sports media about women’s sports finally reaching equal status with men’s. But Clark’s exit from the college game and likely rookie season on the dreadful Indiana Fever — which has the first pick in the WNBA draft — will put those theories to the test later this year.

The WNBA remains financially miniscule, bringing in a reported $200 million in revenue — compared to the NBA’s more than $10 billion. ESPN’s SportsCenter provided 91 seconds of coverage for the average WNBA game, compared to 266 seconds for the average NBA game, according to Nielsen. The WNBA Finals last year averaged just 728,000 viewers a game.

Still, the league is growing, and a celebrity with nationwide name recognition and star power could work to change the WNBA’s fortunes. So far, even before Clark has been drafted, the buzz is boosting ticket sales.

Ticket reseller TickPick said WNBA ticket sales for next season are up 222% from this point last year, and Fever tickets have already outpaced last year’s total by 86%. And Fever home games are setting back fans $81 a ticket — up from just $45 for last season.

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

Away games won’t get you any help — an opportunity to watch Caitlin Clark play in a rival city costs $108 on average, TickPick said, up 151% from last year’s $43 average ticket price to watch the Fever play an away game.

Oh, yeah, and in the men’s college basketball final Monday, the Huskies won their second-straight championship, beating the Boilermakers, who were in their first final since 1969. Whatever.