Iowa-South Carolina Draws Record-Shattering TV Audience
The question was not if the showdown between Iowa and South Carolina in the national championship game on Sunday would set a new TV viewership record for women's basketball, but rather how big the viewership numbers would be. The answer? Very, very, very big.
The game smashed existing viewership record, with a currently reported total of 18.7 million viewers (the number is likely to tick up as final ratings information comes in). The game peaked with an astonishing 24 million viewers.
How big is that number?
To put it into context:
* It's the largest viewership for any basketball game (college or pro, men or women) since the Virginia-Texas Tech national championship game in 2019
* It's the largest viewership for a non-football or Olympics telecast since 2019
* It's the second-largest non-Olympics women's sporting event after the 2015 Women's World Cup final
These are spectacular numbers, particularly in the current era of cord-cutting, hundreds of programming options, and widely-splintered viewing habits. Caitlin Clark was simply must-see TV -- though even the primary source of those massive viewership numbers was wowed by the 18.7 million viewership number.
There was never a doubt that Sunday's game wouldn't set viewership records. Clark's games in the NCAA Tournament had been gathering viewers like moths to a flame -- and setting multiple records along the way. Iowa's first round blowout of Holy Cross drew 3.2 million viewers, a record for a non-Final Four game in the women's NCAA Tournament. That record lasted two days, before Iowa broke it in the second round, with the Hawkeyes' tight win over West Virginia drawing 4.9 million viewers.
Iowa's win over Colorado in the Sweet 16 crushed those numbers and became the second-most watched game in the history of the women's NCAA Tournament with 6.9 million viewers, trailing only last year's final between Iowa and LSU (9.9 million viewers).
The Iowa-LSU rematch in the Elite Eight shattered the mark those teams had set in the title game with a new record of 12.3 million viewers. Of course, that record was short-lived as well, lasting just four days before Iowa and UConn topped it with 14.2 million viewers in a Final Four thriller on Friday night.
And now Sunday's game, with 18.7 million viewers, blowing past the 14+ million viewers for the Iowa-UConn game.
Sunday's game had all the ingredients you would want for a massive TV audience. Not only did it have Caitlin Clark, it had Clark in the final game of her collegate career, the platform that she used to become a superstar. The game also had enormous stakes, with the Hawkeyes and Gamecocks vying for a national championship -- with South Carolina also trying to complete a perfect 38-0 season as well and get revenge on Iowa for last year's Final Four defeat.
That all added up to an enormous, record-breaking audience tuning in to catch one last glimpse of Clark's heroics on the college level. Caitlin Clark's time at Iowa isn't defined by the records she broke, on the court or in TV ratings, but the litany of records she set will be a notable part of her legacy.
It's incredibly fitting that the last record she set in college was a TV viewership record because that's a testament to her true superpower: her magnetic ability to draw people in to watch her play basketball.
As Adam said yesterday:
[S]he is the greatest ambassador women's college basketball has ever had. Where seemingly nobody could break the sport through the modern national consciousness (perhaps unfairly so), Clark could — and did — through her unmatchable combination of talent, drive, joy and dedication to her team.
She drew people into women's college basketball one last time on Sunday, in the biggest ratings display yet. The long-term effect of the massive attention she brought to women's college basketball will be determined in the years to come -- that is, just how much of the audience she attracted will keep tuning in to women's college hoops with Clark off in the WNBA -- but for now it's enough to celebrate what she's already done. There's never been a ratings draw like Caitlin Clark -- the proof is right there in the record-breaking numbers.