NCAA men’s basketball final ratings up, but fall short of women’s

For the primary time, the NCAA girls’s basketball championship outdrew the boys.

UConn’s 75-60 victory over Purdue in Monday night time’s males’s ultimate on TBS and TNT averaged 14.82 million viewers, in line with Nielsen. That was not sufficient to surpass the 18.87 million who watched South Carolina defeat Caitlin Clark and Iowa in Sunday afternoon’s girls’s ultimate on ABC and ESPN.

Monday night time’s viewers was a 4% improve over final yr’s ultimate between the Huskies and San Diego State on CBS. The quantity seemingly dropped off in the course of the second half when UConn took management to change into the primary repeat champion since Florida in 2007.

The 2 males’s semifinal video games averaged 12.8 million. UConn-Alabama attracted 14.18 million, and the sport between Purdue and NC State averaged 11.45 million. Friday night time’s girls’s semifinal video games averaged 10.8 million, with the Iowa-UConn sport averaging 14.2 million.

The 67 video games of the boys’s match throughout CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV averaged 9.9 million viewers, a 3% improve over final yr. This yr’s match benefited from extra blue-blood and energy convention applications advancing past the primary weekend.