South Carolina-Iowa championship sport attracts in practically 19 million viewers, breaking ranking data

The nationwide championship sport between South Carolina and Iowa smashed scores data after averaging practically 19 million viewers, ESPN mentioned. 

The South Carolina Gamecocks beat school famous person Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes 87-75, ending the season undefeated. A median of 18.9 million viewers turned on the ultimate, making it essentially the most watched ladies’s school basketball sport ever, based on knowledge from Nielsen, ESPN mentioned Tuesday. The epic finale, which was broadcast on ABC and ESPN, peaked at 24.1 million viewers within the sport’s ultimate quarter-hour. 

ESPN mentioned viewership additionally considerably elevated from the 2 most up-to-date ladies’s nationwide championship video games – up 90% from 2023 and 289% from 2022.  

It was the second most-watched non-Olympic ladies’s sporting occasion ever on U.S. tv behind the 2015 Ladies’s World Cup Remaining, based on ESPN. It is also the most-watched basketball sport – school or professional, males’s or ladies’s – in 5 years. 

A lot of the eye to the sport got here, partially, due to Clark, who was taking part in her final school sport after a historic profession as a Hawkeye. She turned the all-time NCAA Division I scoring chief, surpassing Pete Maravich’s 54-year-old report. Clark’s anticipated to be the high draft choose in subsequent week’s WNBA draft and has already prompted the Las Vegas Aces to alter venues for his or her July 2 sport in opposition to the Indiana Fever, which is extensively anticipated to select up Clark. 

The Gamecocks, led by coach Daybreak Staley, returned to campus and celebrated in entrance of followers at Colonial Life Enviornment on Monday. Staley praised Clark following Sunday’s sport, calling her “one of many GOATs of our sport.”

“We’d like as many eyeballs on our sport as Caitlin Clark is placing on our sport, like yearly,” she mentioned on “CBS Mornings.” “She’s leaving us after this season and have to be changed with some gifted gamers which are developing, some gifted groups. And I believe we’re in an excellent place as a result of we’re in excessive demand. Folks need to see the expertise in our sport. And if we proceed that, these numbers will probably be constant even when Caitlin leaves.”