Originally posted on MediaVillage
By: Daniel Senor, Senior Research Analyst, AMS
The madness resumes on Saturday now that the NCAA Final Four is set in both brackets. So far, we have seen that the Men’s Tournament grew in the first two rounds (the highest in 32 years!), but experienced declines for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8. For the Women’s Tournament, it was always projected that viewership would decrease from last year, due to Caitlin Clark going pro after the 2024 season. However, this tournament is on track to be the 2nd most-watched Women’s tournament, showing that interest in Women’s basketball is growing.
This year, the Men’s bracket was missing a “Cinderella”-type storyline, which is a possible reason why ratings for those rounds faltered. It will be interesting to see if that missing storyline influences the Final 4 and National Championship games since this is the first time since 2008 that the remaining 4 teams are all #1 seeds. Will the lack of a “Cinderella” lead to more declines, or was that narrative a hindrance for the middle of the bracket? Will the competitive aspect of the 4 highest-ranked teams lead to more viewers?
For a prediction of how the Women’s tournament will go, a look at the regular season’s increase of 3% from last year indicates that it’s safe to speculate that ratings for the tournament would not come crashing down to pre-Caitlin Clark levels. It’s also worth noting that the Women’s tournament has historically seen lower viewership in the first 2 rounds compared to the Men’s because the talent disparity between the higher and lower seeds is much greater for the Women, leading to a lot more blowouts. Women’s basketball has also received better exposure in recent years, on networks like ABC and ESPN leading to more viewers than ESPN2 and ESPNU. The viewership that Women’s basketball is drawing this year shows that the sport is on the rise and wasn’t just a “lightning in a bottle” moment in 2024.
As March Madness concludes, it will be interesting to see how the remaining games impact the overall narrative of each bracket. If the Men’s side struggles to match ratings from recent years, it will be due to a combination of two things: 1) a lack of upsets throughout the tournament and 2) only 1 traditional powerhouse (Duke) is still in it. The Women’s side isn’t expecting to beat last year’s numbers, but if the trend continues, it shows that even without the star power of 2024, Women’s college basketball is a growing sport.
