Iowa’s victory over South Carolina was a hit for ESPN, drawing 5.5 million viewers

Caitlin Clark and Iowa’s nail-biting victory over South Carolina on Friday night in the semifinals of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament was watched by an average of 5.5 million viewers, ESPN said Saturday, citing early data from Nielsen. That’s the third-largest crowd ever on ESPN for a women’s basketball game and the largest crowd ever for a semifinal.

ESPN has shown most of the women’s tournament since 1996 when it took over the rights from CBS. The only games to draw larger crowds than the Iowa vs. South Carolina matchup were two tournament finals in the early 2000s, with Diana Taurasi and a juggernaut Connecticut team winning three straight championships.

On Friday night, Clark demonstrated her shooting and other offensive skills for Iowa as she took on a previously undefeated South Carolina team that was the heavy favorite to win a second straight championship. The game more than lived up to those high expectations, with Clark scoring 41 points – her second consecutive 40-point game – and Iowa holding off several late pushes from the Gamecocks, who showed their depth even in defeat.

The large viewership for Iowa-South Carolina and the 3.4 million average viewership of the other tight semifinal, between Louisiana State and Virginia Tech, add to what is already a well-watched tournament. For Friday night’s games, viewership had already increased by 42 percent compared to last year’s tournament.

Sunday’s finals, featuring Iowa and LSU, will not take place in the traditional prime-time slot and will instead begin at 3 p.m. Eastern. But it’ll be on ABC, the first time in decades the finale was shown on a broadcast channel, available in more homes than cable channels such as ESPN and ESPN2.

While ESPN is celebrating the high level of interest in the tournament, that could also lead the company, or another broadcaster, to spend more money in the future. ESPN’s rights to screen the tournament and 28 other NCAA title events expire next year. A report commissioned by the NCAA found that the women’s tournament could be worth at least $85 million by 2025; the NCAA valued the tournament at just $6 million in ESPN’s current deal.

There have been efforts within college sports to break out the women’s tournament to maximize its value and sell the rights separately, such as the NCAA deal with CBS and Turner Sports for the men’s tournament.

The number of viewers for the semi-finals, as measured by Nielsen, is not yet final. ESPN released early data based on what’s called fast nationals, a smaller sample of viewers that are processed quickly. The final ratings will not be known until early next week. While the final ratings sometimes differ significantly from fast nationals, they usually don’t.

And while it’s clear that Friday night’s games were widely watched, and that across the board, more people are watching women’s basketball, women’s professional basketball, and women’s soccer, there’s one major caveat that makes it difficult to fully compare viewership to recent years. years.

In 2020, Nielsen began including what it calls outdoor viewing in its ratings. This measurement, which TV networks have pushed for years to include in ratings, takes into account people who watch television in bars, airports, gyms and other locations outside of their own homes. In particular, the change increases viewership data for sports more often than for scripted programs, as sports are more likely to be televised in those public settings.

While it depends on the specific sport, watching outside the home increases ratings by 5 to 10 percent. Or, to put it another way, if Nielsen measured outdoor viewership in 2002 when Connecticut beat Oklahoma, it might have measured 6 million people watching the game instead of 5.7 million.

But to understand the growing popularity of women’s college basketball, all you need to do is look at the viewership numbers for the men’s tournament. Viewers for all windows of last weekend’s Men’s Regional Semifinals and Regional Finals were downstairs compared to last year – some by more than 20 percent.