The Sports Junkies on 106.7 The Fan in Washington, D.C. marveled at the number of people who tuned in to the women’s NCAA Tournament game between Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes against Angel Reese and LSU. The game broke the record for the most-watched women’s college basketball game, drawing an average of 12.3 million viewers. The game peaked at 16 million viewers.
“[The numbers] were spectacular,” said JP Flaim. “They had 12.3 million viewers, which was the most to watch a women’s basketball game going all the way back to Cheryl Miller. And then if you look at some of the metrics, just comparing them to other sports. I mean every sport except for the NFL would want what happened there.”
Flaim continued to run down the list of things the game beat in terms of audience. “It beat every women’s college basketball game ever,” he said. “It beat every ESPN college basketball game ever. It beat every Major League Baseball game last season, every NHL game last season, every MLS game last season, every NBA game last season except one and every college football regular season game last season except one.”
John ‘Cakes’ Auville replied, “That shocks me that it’s outdrawing basically every college football game…Shocking.”
Flaim mentioned the show had talked previously about whether or not this is sustainable for women’s basketball. “I have a lot of doubts,” he said. “…Based on something I saw from last season to this season; there does appear to be growth and maybe that will continue.”
Flaim continued on saying, “Maybe what they’re going to do is that ESPN…is going to start marketing the players who will be back next year who are supposedly stars. It won’t be Caitlin Clark but like JuJu Watkins.”
Jason Bishop wondered more about what will happen next year when Clark is expected to be in the WNBA. “Is this going to transfer to the WNBA numbers? Are people going to watch WNBA Caitlin Clark games?”
‘Cakes’ said regardless, it is going to take some time. “…They have a long way to go. The WNBA, the most anticipated finals in league history averaged a .45 rating and 728,000 viewers across ABC and ESPN… I am sure she is going to provide a boost in her games, but the question is…is that going to filter over to games that don’t involve her? I would guess probably no.”
‘Lurch’ Biship noted, “The number also is very high because of who they were playing. If that was Iowa playing Ohio State in the Elite Eight, they’re not getting 12 million. But the fact that they got Angel Reese and they got Mulkey, and she has all this controversy, I’m sure it would have gotten 6 or 7 million but 12 million is because of that matchup.”
Flaim brought up a few more sports television ratings from the past such as when the NHL in 2021 was on NBC and didn’t average more than 400,000 viewers or when the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2023 had an average of 1.23 million viewers. This led to a bit of a debate about what will happen in Caitlin Clark’s next game, Friday night against UConn in the Final Four. Bishop said he projects around the same number while others believe there is not nearly the interest in UConn as there has been in the past.
