The regional semifinals within the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament averaged 2.9 million viewers across ESPN networks, which marks the second-highest average on record for the company. Yet the game broadcasts are down by 53% from last year when the Elite 8 round averaged 6.2 million viewers, but up by 34% from two years ago, according to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch. As it pertains to the ABC broadcast network specifically, the entity averaged 3.2 million viewers for its game broadcasts, representative of a 17% year-over-year proliferation.
ABC was the broadcast home of the third most-watched Elite 8 game on record when the LSU Tigers faced the UCLA Bruins. The matchup averaged 3.4 million viewers on ABC, ESPN+ and Disney+ with a peak of 4.4 million viewers, ultimately leading the way against other contests in the round. The game between the Duke Blue Devils and South Carolina Gamecocks finished second with an average of 3.1 million viewers across the aforementioned entities, finishing as the fourth most-watched Elite 8 game on record. This matchup between interstate rivals peaked with a total of 4.1 million viewers.
Games within the regional semifinals broadcast on ESPN averaged a collective 2.6 million viewers, indicating the second-best Elite 8 performance on record for the network. The game between the UConn Huskies and USC Trojans averaged 3 million viewers on the network and attained a peak of 3.4 million viewers. Although it placed sixth among the most-viewed Elite 8 games on record, the game was down 55% from the previous year. The Texas Longhorns and TCU Horned Frogs had a similar fate, averaging 2.3 million viewers and securing the ninth most-viewed Elite 8 game on record with an 81% year-over-year decline. The Monday night game peaked with 3.2 million viewers.
Through the regional semifinals round of the tournament, ESPN is averaging 967,000 viewers for its game presentations, representing a 31% decline from the presentation last year. Prior to this round, ESPN averaged 1.7 million viewers for its presentation of the Sweet 16 and presented four of the 10 most-watched games in the round of all time. As a whole, the company is up 47% in average viewership through the Elite 8 round from two years ago and has accrued 5 billion total minutes viewed thus far, marking the second-highest total at this point on record.
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