ESPN has announced that the Elite Eight matchup between the LSU Tigers and Iowa Hawkeyes has broken the record for the most-watched college basketball game on ESPN platforms on record, drawing an average of 12.3 million viewers. The game peaked at 16 million viewers, according to Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, and total viewership was up 24% over the NCAA Women’s Championship Game last year on ABC.
Cheryl Miller’s NCAA Championship Game debut in 1983 previously set the mark for the most-watched college basketball game of all time, averaging 11.83 million viewers on CBS. The Iowa-LSU matchup on Monday night attained a larger average audience than several other marquee sporting events, including the Stanley Cup Final and World Series. Additionally, the game had the largest cable audience for a basketball game in the last year. Four games airing on broadcast television surpassed the average viewership number, three of which came from the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, according to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch.
The matchup was a rematch of last year’s NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament National Championship Game where LSU defeated Iowa by a final score of 102-85. The matchup, which was broadcast on ABC and simulcast on ESPN2, averaged 9.9 million viewers and peaked at 12.6 million viewers.
On Monday night from the Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y., Iowa reigned victorious on the strength of 41 points and 12 assists from superstar guard Caitlin Clark. Earlier in the year, Clark broke the all-time scoring record in NCAA basketball, passing Pete Maravich with 3,685 points.
The UConn Huskies’ win over the USC Trojans averaged 6.7 million viewers, a metric that surpasses every NCAA title game since 1996 outside of last year. This matchup peaked at 10.4 million viewers and represents the fourth-largest audience for the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament since 1995.
ABC will broadcast the 2024 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball National Championship Game on Sunday, April 7 at 3 p.m. EST, which will also be available to stream on ESPN+. The game will take place from the RocketMortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio, an arena that will also serve as the home of the two Final Four semifinal matchups. ESPN will broadcast both games on Friday, April 5, the first of which is between NC State and South Carolina at 7 p.m. EST. The second game featuring Iowa and UConn will commence at 9:30 p.m. EST to determine the championship matchup. Play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco, color commentator Rebecca Lobo and reporter Holly Rowe will be on the call for all three games.
