2024/25 Wbb TV Eyeballs

[bballnut90]

Women's regional semis, finals, down big from last year's records

If nowhere close to last year's heights, viewership for the NCAA women's basketball regionals did not fall all the way back to earth.

www.sportsmediawatch.com

Those numbers look great if you don’t compare this year’s games to the Caitlin Clark games

 

[cancontent]

Those numbers look great if you don’t compare this year’s games to the Caitlin Clark games

They're still great even if you factor the Clark games. The assumption was the drop off was going to be significant and that didn't happen. The ESPN numbers show growth over 2023 as well. Take it and run is what I say.

 

[BigTenGuy]

They're still great even if you factor the Clark games. The assumption was the drop off was going to be significant and that didn't happen. The ESPN numbers show growth over 2023 as well. Take it and run is what I say.

The growth story versus 2023 is somewhat overstated by more games being on more accessible networks in 2025 (a good thing). The Sweet 16 round in 2023 was 1 ABC game, 6 ESPN games and 1 ESPN2 game. This year the Sweet 16 round was 2 ABC games and 6 ESPN games. The claimed Sweet 16 increase of 39% over 2023 doesn’t adjust for this or methodology changes that increase viewership compared to 2023.

Similarly the Elite 8 round in 2023 was 4 ESPN games versus 2 ABC and 2 ESPN this year. Not sure the ABC Elite 8 games this year drawing 3.4M and 3.1M represent an actual increase in popularity over Louisville-Iowa drawing 2.499M on ESPN in 2023. Getting back to network television has been really good for WBB. The long period of being only on ESPN/ESPN2 was really bad for viewership.

The apples-to-apples comparisons to 2024 show a significant drop to Clark and Reese games, but the 2025 numbers are still good. JuJu’s absence also really hurt the ratings for the Monday night Elite 8 games.

 

[cancontent]

 

[TheFarmFan]

This is genuinely impressive, insofar as both games were completely uninteresting after halftime (to someone with no deep rooting interests and who just wanted close games).

 

[Centerstream]

100% Swerve: Watching SEC softball on ESPNU and Eric Frede is doing the play by play. I really enjoyed listening to him and Meghan doing the SNY UConn WBB games a few years ago.
Eric and Bob Picozzi are my two most favorite Husky play by play announcers.
End of Swerve.

 

[Centerstream]

I wonder which year semi-finals are #1 and 2.

 

[cancontent]

100% Swerve: Watching SEC softball on ESPNU and Eric Frede is doing the play by play. I really enjoyed listening to him and Meghan doing the SNY UConn WBB games a few years ago.
Eric and Bob Picozzi are my two most favorite Husky play by play announcers.
End of Swerve.

Maybe we should adopt this format? A start and finish to make it clean.

 

[cancontent]

Took me a couple moments to process, but the numbers for just ESPN are still solid. Yes, it's lower than 2023 or 2024 (Clark effect), but a significant jump from UConn - SC round one.

 

[12au]

Took me a couple moments to process, but the numbers for just ESPN are still solid. Yes, it's lower than 2023 or 2024 (Clark effect), but a significant jump from UConn - SC round one.

Lol--what are weird way to show ratings for all 4 games in that tweet. Just show the number of viewers for each year.

 

[BigTenGuy]

8.5 million is a legitimately impressive viewership number, showing the floor has been substantially raised, especially when the two biggest WBB brands are both involved. Still, I wish ESPN wouldn’t compare it to the ESPN-only era (1996-2022) that ended in 2022. Network+cable beating just cable proves little.

While there is reason for skepticism about the early WBB viewership numbers on CBS before Nielsen’s people meters began (1988 for WBB), this year’s 8.5 million viewers ranks 6th out of the 17 network WBB championship games:

2024-18.882M Iowa-South Carolina
1983-11.84M USC-La Tech
1986-11.22M USC-Texas
2023-9.92M Iowa-LSU
1982-8.79M La Tech-Cheyney
2025-8.5M UConn-South Carolina

 

[cancontent]

Some interesting numbers to chew on. The comparison to the 2008-2009 regular season is an eye opener.

 

[BigTenGuy]

At this point it appears that Fox (and others?) will not publish the viewership numbers for 10 of the 18 regular season games shown during the 2024-25 season on Fox:

11/28/24 South Carolina v. Iowa State
12/28/24 Creighton v. St. John’s
1/4/25 UCLA v. Indiana
1/19/25 Iowa State v. West Virginia
1/20/25 Baylor v. UCLA
1/20/25 Maryland v. Texas
1/25/25 UConn v. Creighton
2/17/25 Iowa v. Ohio St
2/17/25 Kansas St. v. West Virginia
2/22/25 Iowa State v. Baylor


Fox made a big deal about increasing the number of games shown on big Fox to 18. A good thing. But assume the silence about more than half the Fox schedule means that the Fox ratings as a whole for 2024-25 were dramatically down from the inflated 2023-24 ratings. Would love to see the actual Fox viewership numbers for 2024-25.