MARCH MADNESS
How Iowa’s Caitlin Clark brought in 24 million viewers to the NCAA Championship
The NCAA Women’s final between Iowa and South Carolina was expected to break viewing records and it did so, with an average 18.7 million viewers.
The NCAA Women’s Basketball championship game between the Iowa Hawkeyes and South Carolina Gamecocks brought in record viewership, averaging 18.7 million viewers and peaking at 24 million. It was the most-watched women’s basketball game of all time.
The two women’s games closest behind this one on the most-watched list also happen to be games in which Iowa’s biggest star Caitlin Clark was playing, and that’s no coincidence. Previously, the Final Four game between Iowa and UCONN on April 5 broke records with 14.2 million viewers, and before that it was Iowa’s victory over LSU on April 1 with 12.3 million.
Before Clark came on the scene, women’s basketball just wasn’t gaining much interest in comparison to men’s. The record before this year for the most-watched women’s basketball game was set in 1983 when South Carolina beat Lousiana Tech in the tournament’s second year.
How does the women’s viewership compare to men’s in the NCAA tournament?
As mentioned, the women’s game typically doesn’t even compare to the men’s, though it’s been catching up in recent years and this year’s tournament is the first time we’ve seen a comparison this close.
Last year’s NCAA women’s final also attracted a record 10 million viewers when LSU beat Clark’s Iowa, but that was still well short of the men’s, which gained 14.7 million. In fact, that men’s final between Connecticut and San Diego State was the least-watched men’s basketball game of all time.
This year’s women’s final blew that record out of the water, with more viewers than five of the men’s basketball tournaments over the last 10 years. Time will tell how tonight’s NCAA men’s championship between Purdue and UCONN will stack up to the 18.7 million the women brought in, but even if the men gain more, this is a clear change in the typical comparison between men and women’s basketball viewership. And Caitlin Clark is largely to thank for that. She is expected to go No. 1 overall in the 2024 WNBA Draft and we can expect her to break records there as well.