I had to wait a year to add this reply because I wanted to have cold, hard facts to back up my premise:
Caitlin Clark was the most captivating attraction womens basketball has ever seen.
When her popularity was sky high last year all sorts of excuses and arguments were made to deny that; the most common one being that she was simply 'riding the wave' of an upturn in popularity of WBB. Well, if that was true we'd be seeing even bigger tv numbers this year, right?
2024 Sweet 16 Iowa/Colorado 6.9 million viewers
2024 Elite 8 Iowa/LSU 12.3 million
2024 Final 4 Iowa/UConn 14.4 million
2024 Championship Iowa/S Carolina 18.9 million
2025 Sweet 16 8 game average 1.7 million (max game was 3.0 million)
2025 Elite 8 UCLA/LSU 3.4 million
S Carolina/Duke 3.1 million
USC/UConn 3.0 million
Texas/TCU 2.3 million
2025 Final 4 UConn/UCLA 4.1 million
S Carolina/Texas 3.6 million
2025 Championship UConn/S Carolina 8.5 million
4X more viewers for Sweet 16; 4X more viewers for Elite 8; 3.6X more for Final 4; 10.4 million more viewers for Championship game....more
than double this year's game. It's not even close. This post isn't about who's the greatest, etc, but it's indisputable that she's the biggest draw ever.