If you are an avid sports media viewer – (by show of hands) – you start to think about what is possible. Seven million viewers? Eight millions? Nine million? How bad can Monday night go? We’re in the middle of the biggest women’s college basketball tournament in history, and Iowa vs. LSU in the Elite Eight is the most anticipated non-Final Four game ever. This game is a rematch of last year’s national championship, which averaged 9.9 million viewers and peaked at 12.6 million, the most-watched women’s college basketball game on record.
Last year’s title match was a unicorn. It changed public perception, investment in the sport, everything. The previous record for an NCAA women’s basketball title game in the ESPN era (since 1996) was 5.68 million viewers for UConn’s win over Oklahoma in 2002. ( The previous all-time high, according to Sports Media Watch, is an estimated 8.1 million viewers for a Virginia-Stanford national semifinal on CBS in 1992.) LSU’s victory over Iowa erased it.
Now comes an Elite Eight doubleheader that highlights everything about the evolution of the sport. ESPN will broadcast No. 1 seed Iowa vs. No. 3 LSU at 7:15 p.m. ET, followed by No. 1 USC vs. No. 3 UConn. The headliners playing in Albany and Portland for more than four hours — Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese, USC’s JuJu Watkins and UConn’s Paige Bueckers — are big basketball stars. college ball, regardless of gender. Ryan Ruocco, Rebecca Lobo and Holly Rowe – the broadcast team that calls the Final Four – will call Iowa-LSU. Beth Mowins, Debbie Antonelli and Angel Gray will call USC-UConn.
“We are excited to have the opportunity to document this,” said Sara Gaiero, ESPN vice president of production, responsible for strategic oversight and management of NCAA women’s basketball coverage. from ESPN. “The game we have on Monday is something that everyone was talking about on Selection Sunday and had been circling in anticipation that it could happen. This is a great opportunity for women’s basketball. There is so much interest in this game because of everything we saw in the national championship last year, because of this LSU team and the Caitlin Clark effect.
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Iowa’s second-round victory over West Virginia drew 4.9 million viewers on ESPN, making it the most-watched women’s tournament game of all time outside of the Final Four contests and games for the title. The game was the third-largest audience for a women’s tournament game in the last 20 years, behind Iowa’s national championship loss to LSU last year and its national semifinal victory over South Carolina two days earlier (5.60 million).
It’s not all about Clark, although she is the main mover of the action. Second round matches averaged 1.4 million viewers across ESPN platforms, the most watched second round on record. Last year, ESPN had its most-watched Elite Eight round ever, averaging 2.2 million viewers, up 43% from 2022. When the numbers are released by Nielsen later this week, that Elite Eight record will likely be broken.
“It doesn’t surprise me because I live in this space all the time,” Gaiero said. “I see how fun the games are and how great these athletes are. I’m not surprised people are coming to watch. … We’re in a moment with women’s basketball. Everyone knows what Caitlin Clark did for the game, but…we resonate in so many different spaces, and that’s because we have Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins and (Notre Dame) Hannah Hidalgo and South Carolina who are aiming for an undefeated season and all that. intrigues. »
Gaiero said ESPN has been watching Iowa-LSU’s potential for some time and has been offering short-form content such as flashbacks from previous games, promotional bumpers and thematically edited pieces that they have sent to other ESPN shows. She said there has been significant buy-in from other ESPN entities — something that has been very difficult for ESPN’s women’s basketball production group in the past. Shows such as “Get Up,” “First Take,” “The Pat McAfee Show,” “SportsCenter” and “Pardon the Interruption” all had segments on women’s basketball this month.
Monday could also be the final game of Clark’s college career. She is the all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I and, at least in terms of viewership, the most popular women’s college basketball player of all time. Gaiero said if Iowa loses, the show will mark the end of a remarkable run.
“There’s another game behind that one, so we have to think about that as well,” she said. “But we certainly don’t want to rush off the air and not celebrate and appreciate this career and put in proper context what we’ve witnessed. From a bigger business perspective, we have reporting features that reflect his career that we can release after our coverage as we would any other star whose career is coming to an end and moving on to the next chapter.
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Lobo, in an interview Sunday, called it the most anticipated non-Final Four women’s college basketball game ever. She said it feels like a major rivalry even though the teams have only played once recently.
“Their meeting at last year’s national championship was a lightning rod for so many things, both on and off the field,” Lobo said. “People seem to be either Clark fans or Angel fans, but not both, Iowa fans or LSU fans, but not both. This game has the feeling of cold-blooded rivalry of teams that have a long history, like UConn and Tennessee back in the day, even if that history only includes one game. …
“It’s going to be a massive audience. We know it will be very well played and include some incredible basketball moments. I truly believe it will live up to the hype.
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(Photo of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese in last year’s championship game: Photo by Greg Nelson/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)