For the first time in history, the women’s NCAA championship game had a bigger TV audience than the men’s championship.
The latest ratings on Tuesday showed that 18.9 million viewers watched undefeated South Carolina defeat Iowa and standout player Caitlin Clark.
The match, broadcast on a Sunday afternoon by ABC and ESPN, outperformed the men’s final game between UConn and Purdue by a whopping four million viewers. The men’s final match reached 14.82 million viewers on average on TBS and TNT as the Huskies won 75-60.
South Carolina’s fourth National title became the most watched, with 24.1 million persons watching the last quarter-hour. It also became the second most-watched women’s sports event in the USA, that wasn’t the Olympic Games. It was surpassed only by the USA’s 2015 Women’s World Cup final against Japan, watched by an average of 25.4 million people on Fox.
The U.S. women’s basketball team and South Carolina head coach played during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and faced Brazil in the gold medal match. The match became the most-watched women’s basketball match in USA history, with an average of 19.5 million people watching.
This year’s audience increased by 90% compared to last when LSU chased Clark and Iowa for the national trophy. It was also the first broadcast on network television since 1995. However, there remains doubt about such figures when Clark enters her rookie season in the WNBA.