Even in an era of increasing dominance by power conferences in college basketball, viewers flocked to March Madness in hefty numbers.
Monday’s championship game in the Division I men’s basketball tournament, won by Michigan over Connecticut, garnered an average of 18.3 million viewers on TNT, truTV, and HBO Max—up 23% from the comparable broadcast in 2024 on those TNT Sports outlets and marking the event’s most-watched title game on any network since 2019. The audience for the title game peaked with an audience of 20.4 million viewers between 11 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. ET.
The entire Final Four, also involving Illinois and Arizona, averaged 14.2 million viewers, up 11% from 2024. All of March Madness, also involving CBS, averaged 10.9 million viewers, up 7% from last year and representing the second-most-watched tournament since 1994.
Those final measurements followed a torrid start to the tournament, including the most-watched first round ever, the most-watched second round since 1993, and further audience increases in every broadcast window for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds.
TNT Sports and CBS Sports share coverage of March Madness, with the title game alternating each year between the broadcast-based CBS and the cable-focused TNT. Despite this year’s turn on TNT, the Wolverines’ win over the Huskies still topped the average of 18.1 million viewers last year for the Florida-Houston clash on CBS.
As has been the case for all of U.S. television since last September, March Madness also enjoyed the lift of Nielsen’s enhanced measurement from its Big Data + Panel process, as well as expanded tabulation of out-of-home audiences. The across-the-board audience increases in this year’s tournament, however, almost certainly reflect additional viewership beyond the impact of the new Nielsen processes.
The bullish numbers from men’s college basketball follow similar audience lifts in recent months for the College Football Playoff and women’s March Madness.
