The NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament ended with a championship for the South Carolina Gamecocks, the second in the last three years for the program. In a tournament that has set numerous viewership records, the matchup between South Carolina and Iowa garnered an average of 18.7 million viewers, eclipsing the record that had been set last week in the Final Four. The matchup, which peaked at 24 million viewers, is now the most-watched basketball game – college (MCBB, WCBB) and professional (NBA, WNBA) – since 2019. The metric renders the championship showdown as the most-watched women’s college basketball game on record. Excluding football and the Olympics, it was the most-watched sporting event since 2019.
Play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco, color commentator Rebecca Lobo and reporter Holly Rowe were on the call for the ABC broadcast, while WNBA legends Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi hosted an alternate telecast on ESPN. Pregame and postgame coverage featured Elle Duncan, Andraya Carter, Chiney Ogwumike, Carolyn Peck and Aliyah Boston. South Carolina secured the fifth perfect season in NCAA women’s basketball history, going undefeated in the regular season and winning the National Championship. Viewership was up 89% from the 2023 NCAA Women’s National Championship Game and 285% from the 2022 iteration of the game. It is the second most-watched non-Olympic women’s sporting event ever.
“With a record-setting audience of 18.7 million viewers, Sunday’s Iowa-South Carolina title game was a fitting finale to the most-viewed ever NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament,” ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement. “These exceptional athletes, coaches and teams captured our attention in unprecedented ways and it’s incumbent on all of us to keep the incredible momentum going. I’m also very proud of our talented and committed employees for how they presented this historic event.”
Earlier last week, the Final Four game between Iowa and UConn set the then-viewership record with an average of 14.2 million viewers on ESPN. At that time, the game encompassed the largest audience for any basketball game on record televised by ESPN and was also the most-viewed college event in the history of ESPN+. The game between NC State and South Carolina averaged 7.1 million viewers, comprising the most-watched women’s national semifinals on record.
Before the Final Four, ESPN secured record viewership of the Elite Eight, led by a rematch of last year’s National Championship Game between the LSU Tigers and Iowa Hawkeyes. The LSU-Iowa game averaged 12.3 million viewers on ESPN and was the most-watched Elite Eight game on record. The women’s quarterfinals averaged 6.2 million viewers, which was up 184% year-over-year. Iowa was televised on ABC during the Sweet 16 several days earlier where it defeated Colorado and scored an average of 6.9 million viewers.
