The Notre Dame Irish defeated the UConn Huskies last Thursday in a thrilling women’s college basketball matchup. Led by standout guard Hannah Hidalgo, the Irish improved to 8-2 on the regular season and did so in front of a record-setting audience. This early regular-season matchup averaged 847,000 viewers on ESPN, according to data from Nielsen Media Research, the most-watched women’s college basketball game of the season thus far. Moreover, the game averaged a 0.49 rating and peaked at 915,000 viewers, garnering the largest women’s college basketball audience on the ESPN networks before the month of January since 2011.
Earlier in the year, ESPN reached an agreement with the NCAA to extend its broadcast rights for 40 NCAA championships, including women’s basketball, volleyball and baseball. Networks owned by The Walt Disney Company will televise the NCAA Division I women’s college basketball tournament in March 2025, including the championship matchup on Sunday, April 6 on ABC.
This game will occur after the South Carolina-Iowa championship game last season averaged 18.9 million viewers, representing the most-watched basketball contest for ESPN since 2019. ESPN platforms set records during the Final Four, including the most-watched Final Four, national semifinals, Elite Eight, Sweet 16 and second-round games.
On Tuesday night, ESPN presented the Jimmy V Men’s Classic from Madison Square Garden featuring Miami-Tennessee and Michigan-Arkansas games. The broadcast averaged 791,000 viewers on ESPN, which is down 20% year-over-year from the 994,000 previously elicited. The Jimmy V Women’s Classic between NC State and Louisville aired on ABC this past Sunday at 1 p.m. EST. ESPN Events organizes these games every year, continuing a commitment to support the V Foundation for Cancer Research. ESPN has raised more than $326 million for the V Foundation since 1993, and the annual V Week has raised approximately $89 million over the last 17 years.
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