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The women’s Final Four saw a viewership bump, with a little help from the Easter holiday.
The NCAA women’s basketball title game between UCLA and South Carolina drew 9.9 million viewers on ABC per Nielsen data, ESPN announced Tuesday. It’s the third-most-watched women’s title game since Nielsen began tracking the game’s viewership in 1989. It’s also a 16% increase from last year’s game that saw the Bueckers-led Huskies defeat the Gamecocks.
The viewership numbers come despite UCLA’s 28-point blowout win, the third-largest margin of victory for a women’s national title game. It was never close as the Bruins were up by double-digits for the final three quarters.
The game landed on Easter Sunday, which has historically boosted viewership. Last year, the NBA drew its most-watched playoffs opening weekend since 2000 during Easter weekend.
Another boost comes from Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology, which it’s used to track viewership since September, resulting in increased numbers across the board.
The numbers still pale in comparison to the 2024 national title game that featured Caitlin Clark and Iowa against South Carolina which drew a record 18.9 million viewers. It had four million more viewers than the men’s title game that year, the first time the women outdrew the men.
But this year’s title game rated similarly to the 2023 title game between Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes and Angel Reese’s LSU Tigers, which also drew 9.92 million viewers. It’s also significantly up compared to the 2022 title game between UConn and South Carolina that drew 4.85 million viewers, though that was also the last time the game was aired on ESPN rather than ABC.
The 2026 Final Four was the second-most-watched ever, averaging 5.2 million viewers on ESPN. The UConn vs. South Carolina semifinal game drew 5.4 million while UCLA vs. Texas drew 5 million.
