TV Rankings: Men’s NCAA Final Falls Short of Females’s Title Sport for First Time

Label text

The viewers for the NCAA males’s basketball championship ticked up from final year’s low — but for the first time, the males’s sport drew a smaller TV crowd than the females’s final.

Connecticut’s 75-60 victory over Purdue on Monday — a end result that used to be now now not in doubt for lots of the 2nd half — averaged 14.82 million viewers across TBS, TNT and TruTV. That’s a smidge higher than the 14.69 million who watched UConn salvage the title final year on CBS, which is the bottom on sage.

Neither the championship nor either of Saturday’s Final Four contests used to be essentially the most watched sport of the event — an exceedingly uncommon occasion. The cease sport on this year’s males’s March Madness used to be the March 31 Elite Eight matchup between North Carolina Voice and Duke, which had 15.14 million viewers. The Final Four video games drew 11.45 million and 14.18 million viewers.

Sunday’s females’s championship sport between South Carolina and Iowa introduced in 18.87 million viewers on ABC and ESPN, a sage for females’s basketball within the United States and essentially the most watched hoops contest of any variety in 5 years. The females’s final boasted a 90 p.c affect bigger over the 9.92 million who tuned in for the 2023 sport. The females’s Final Four video games averaged 7.17 million and 14.42 million viewers, with the latter sport (Iowa vs. Connecticut) environment an all-time sage for females’s hoops, till it used to be damaged two days later with the final sport.

The males’s event as a total improved some on the 2023 edition, averaging 9.9 million viewers (up 3 p.c year-to-year) over its 67 video games on CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV. It also posted double-digit development amongst adults below 35, rising 14 p.c from a year within the past.

The females’s event more than doubled its viewers year to year: ESPN says corpulent protection of the bracket averaged 2.2 million viewers, up 121 p.c from 2023. That’s the categorical performance for the females’s event because it’s been an ESPN property, relationship help to 1996.

April 10, 10:25 a.m. Updated with final rankings figures for the corpulent females’s event.

Subscribe

Signal Up