With the Super Bowl in the rearview, the sports calendar now shifts to March Madness. While the men’s tournament has traditionally been the main attraction, the women’s game sprung into focus after last year’s championship game outdrew the men’s by more than four million viewers.
Caitlin Clark was undoubtedly the biggest part of that growth, together with the rest of the 2024 WNBA draft class that included Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso. But while there will be clear viewership drops in the NCAA with the departure of Clark, there also appears to be a lasting net positive effect.
So far this year, viewership of NCAA women’s basketball games on ESPN platforms is averaging 234,000, down 18% versus the same point last year. However, it is up 17% relative to the 2022–2023 season, Clark’s junior year.
Fox is averaging 699,000 viewers for its games this year, down 24% versus last year, but up 4% over the 2022–2023 season and 18% over the 2021–2022 season.
This trend is similar to Clark’s effect in the WNBA. The two playoff games with the Indiana Fever averaged 2.2 million viewers, though the entire postseason averaged just 1.1 million. However, that overall number is still up 139% versus total playoff viewership from the previous year.
Last year’s NCAA tournament turned more eyes toward other stars who stayed in college, in particular UConn’s Paige Bueckers. The Final Four game between the Huskies and Hawkeyes averaged 14.2 million viewers, which nearly matched the viewership of the men’s championship game.
USC’s JuJu Watkins also rose to prominence last year as a star freshman despite not facing Clark in the tournament. This year’s most-watched women’s college basketball game was on Dec. 21 between Bueckers’s Huskies and Watkins’s Trojans, which averaged 2.22 million viewers on Fox. It’s the second-most-watched women’s college basketball game ever on Fox.
The most-watched game was last year between Iowa and Ohio State (3.39 million viewers) when Clark broke the NCAA’s all-time scoring record for both men and women.
UConn has been in two of the five most-watched NCAA games this year on ESPN. At least one of South Carolina and LSU, both schools that were also in the path of Iowa and have established themselves as powerhouses in the college game, were involved in the other three games.
WNBA Next Steps
Bueckers is widely projected to be selected with the No. 1 overall pick by the Dallas Wings in the 2025 WNBA draft. The combo guard is one of the leading names in the late midseason top 20 list for the Wooden Award. Other potential 2025 draftees included on the list are Kentucky’s Georgia Amoore and TCU’s Hailey Van Lith.
Though March Madness is around the corner, these names will be in the pros in about three months due to the odd women’s basketball calendar. Last year’s WNBA draft was just eight days after the national title game, and the start of the season was a month later.
One player who won’t be in the 2025 WNBA draft is UCLA’s Lauren Betts. The 6-foot-7 center is the star of the No. 1 team in the nation and could have been a top-five pick this year. But she confirmed late last week that she’ll return for her senior season with the Bruins.
“College is the best years of your life, and so I don’t think I’d ever give that up,” Betts said.
