And now ?
This is the big media question in women’s college basketball. Where is the sport headed after the national championship game’s eye-popping viewing figures? South Carolina’s 87-75 victory over Iowa on April 7 averaged 18.9 million viewers, the most-watched women’s college basketball game of all time and the highest-ranked basketball game most watched university (male or female) ever recorded for an ESPN platform. Viewership increased 90% compared to the 2023 national championship (9.9 million for LSU’s victory against Iowa) and 289% compared to 2022 (4.9 million viewers for the Carolina victory South vs. UConn). The game peaked at 24 million viewers on ABC and ESPN in the final 15 minutes.
The 2024 NCAA Women’s Final Four was the most watched on record, averaging 13.8 million viewers. Those numbers included 14.4 million viewers for Iowa-UConn (the second most-watched women’s college game on record) and 7.2 million viewers for NC State and South Carolina. The total tournament (57 games) across ESPN platforms averaged 2.2 million viewers, up 121% from 2023. This is the most-watched women’s NCAA tournament since ESPN acquired exclusive rights in 1996.
To put the South Carolina and Iowa viewership into perspective, the game topped:
• Every World Series game since Game 7 in 2019;
• Every NBA Finals game since Game 5 in 2017;
• Every Daytona 500 since 2006;
• Every final round of the Masters since 2001;
• All but four college football games in 2023;
• Every non-Olympic women’s sporting event on U.S. television except one: the 2015 Women’s World Cup final between the United States and Japan.
So this is the momentum the sport is taking to move forward. Iowa star Caitlin Clark is now joining the WNBA, and her departure will undoubtedly lower viewership for next year’s NCAA tournament. It’s unrealistic to think that next year’s title game will be able to attract 18 million people or more, but the opportunity to grow women’s college basketball is enormous.
The first step, in this perspective, consists of increasing the visibility of the regular season programming.
“What I’m focused on with my team is over the next couple of years can we get it to a better place where we have more consistency in our season women’s college basketball offering regular on premier platforms throughout the season,” said Nick. Dawson, ESPN’s senior vice president of programming and acquisitions. “We’ve made a little progress there over the last four or five years, but it’s still a little uneven throughout the regular season in terms of when the opportunity presents itself. How can we create better momentum and a recurring, consistent platform for the sport, especially during the months of January, February and early March as the tournament approaches? »
Dawson is correct that media rights holders who own significant rights to broadcast women’s college basketball nationally – ESPN, Fox Sports (including through Big Ten Network) and Peacock – have the opportunity to present a sport with momentum. It is important to practice sports on linear windows. Take Fox Sports, for example, which aired 14 regular-season women’s college basketball games on Big Fox this season, including airing Tennessee-Indiana immediately following an NFL game on Thanksgiving. (This game attracted 1.12 million viewers.)
This increase in linear TV inventory must continue, particularly on ABC on the Disney side. If Fox is serious about women’s basketball — and it should be if it wants to attract new eyes to its product — we hope it adds full-time national women’s basketball writers to its site Web. Ditto for NBC Sports. (The lack of full-time women’s basketball writers in legacy print and digital media outlets across the country remains shocking.)
For the NCAA Tournament, Dawson said ESPN will continue to build on its national window plan and shift the schedule to take advantage of opportunities from a distribution standpoint. The company’s recent eight-year deal with the NCAA (at an annual cost of $115 million) to televise 40 college sports championships each year, including the women’s basketball tournament, already looks like a sweetheart deal given the number of viewers this year. (The women’s basketball tournament will be broadcast on ABC, per the new contract.)
It’s worth noting that on the school’s side, according to this article by Nicole Auerbach, the NCAA says it’s working to correct one of college basketball’s most obscene disparities. As Auerbach wrote: “Each men’s team that competes in March Madness earns a share of NCAA tournament revenue, called a ‘unit’ for being on the field, and then a unit for each subsequent victory…Each tournament unit of the NCAA is worth just over $2 million and is paid out over a six-year period. Women’s teams receive nothing for making or advancing in their NCAA tournament.
One of the ancillary benefits of this year’s tournament will be the advertising money generated by the sport. Sportico’s Anthony Crupi reported March 21 that surveyed ad buyers said “they wouldn’t be surprised if Disney generated more than $25 million in ad sales revenue” for this year’s tournament. The sales for next year’s tournament compared to this year’s numbers mean that the number of advertising sales is increasing.
“I’m not naive that the explosion in tournament consumption isn’t just due to our commitment to the sport,” Dawson said. “A lot of it is the players on the field, the star Caitlin Clarks of the world. They transformed what you might consider basketball’s core audience to capture the imagination of the casual fan. How can we maintain this? How to sustain the narrative? How can we maintain the ability to create stars? Having a larger number of schools and teams that could appeal to a larger percentage of casual sports fans. We talked a lot with the NCAA during negotiations about working together as best we can to try to do more.
An obvious solution would be to move the national semifinals to a network. Could the entire Women’s Final Four be moved to ABC in the future?
“That’s a good question,” Dawson said. “Conversations have been had regarding the time slot for the championship game as well as network considerations for the national semifinals. This is an eight-year deal, so the starting point may not be where we end up.
“Right now our intention is to continue what we’ve been doing – the championship game on ABC in that sort of late Sunday afternoon slot, which from a potential audience standpoint , our research team proved to us that there is not much difference in terms of upside potential between this window and in a prime time window. The semi-finals take place on a Friday evening, and c. It’s a particularly interesting discussion because it lasts about five-plus hours when you combine the doubleheader, the pregame show and everything else… Nothing’s off the table in the long run. year after year to assess the evolution of the world of distribution.
ESPN executives are already considering opportunities to expand content around sports. For example, they will expand their women’s franchise “College GameDay” next year. You will see more shows on campus sites. They’ll be focused on developing stars, so look for more stories on players like USC’s JuJu Watkins, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo and others who haven’t received as much attention this year as Clark and Angel Reese of LSU.
One thing that seems like an obvious addition for ESPN would be to dedicate a linear show to women’s basketball throughout the year. Look at all the praise the ESPN women’s basketball studio analysts received during the tournament. If you want to hold the crown as the media hub of sports, which ESPN does, these are the kinds of steps you should take.
Dave Roberts, head of event and studio production at ESPN and head of NBA and WNBA production, said the company is willing to consider anything.
“We are transitioning from women’s college basketball to the WNBA, and we couldn’t be in a better position to continue the momentum shown throughout this tournament,” Roberts said. “While we can’t make any announcements at this point, we will pursue every opportunity possible to showcase the sport, and you’ll see it on April 15 with the WNBA Draft. … We will be aggressive, opportunistic and committed to innovative and aggressive programming around women’s basketball.
GO FURTHER
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GO FURTHER
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(Photo by Raven Johnson and Holly Rowe: Ben Solomon / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)