NOTRE DAME'S WIN OVER UCONN SETS SEASON'S VIEWERSHIP HIGH
Last week's blockbuster Top-10 matchup between No. 2 UConn and No. 8 Notre Dame scored ESPN their highest ratings of the young NCAA women's basketball season, averaging 847,000 viewers while peaking at 915,000 during the Thursday evening broadcast.
Notre Dame's big 79-68 win also marked the largest viewing audience for a pre-January NCAA women's basketball game on ESPN since 2011.
Breaking viewership records is nothing new on the college basketball court. Later rounds of the NCAA tournament draw millions, with last year's national championship game scoring 18.9 million viewers to become ESPN's most-watched college basketball game ever, men's or women's.
That said, recent years have seen significant growth in regular-season play, too. The 2022-23 campaign averaged audiences of almost 200,000 across ESPN's platforms, an increase of 11% year-over-year. Last season upped the ante, averaging 272,000 viewers in regular-season play for a 37% increase over 2022-23. That bump made the 2023-24 season ESPN's most-watched in 15 years.
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