Women's NCAA championship game had bigger audience than men for first time ever

The women’s NCAA championship game drew a bigger television audience than the men’s title game for the first time, with an average of 18.9 million viewers watching undefeated South Carolina beat Iowa and superstar Caitlin Clark, according to ratings released Tuesday.

The Sunday afternoon game on ABC and ESPN outdrew Monday’s men’s final between UConn and Purdue by four million. The Huskies’ 75-60 victory averaged 14.82 million on TBS and TNT.

The audience for the women’s game — in which the Gamecocks won their fourth national title and denied Clark’s Hawkeyes their first — peaked at 24.1 million during the final 15 minutes.

It was the second most-watched non-Olympic women’s sporting event on U.S. television, trailing only the 2015 Women’s World Cup final between the United States and Japan, which averaged 25.4 million on Fox. 

The record for the most-watched women’s basketball game still belongs to the gold medal game of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics between the United States and Brazil, which averaged 19.5 million.

The audience for the national title game was up 90% over last year when Clark and Iowa fell to LSU. That also was the first time since 1995 that the championship was on network television.

Clark and Iowa have the three biggest audiences for women’s college basketball. The Hawkeyes’ victory over UConn on Friday night averaged 14.2 million, and their April 1 victory over LSU in the Elite Eight drew 12.3 million.

However, the earnings of the women’s championship brought in significantly less in comparison to the men’s. The women brought in $6.5 million in ad revenues, compared to the men’s $873 million.