Nothing can generate massive live audiences like the NFL.
Well, almost nothing.
Via Sports Business Journal, the Iowa-South Carolina women’s basketball championship on ABC and ESPN averaged 18.7 million viewers. It’s an 89-percent increase over last year’s LSU-Iowa game.
As noted by SBJ, it’s a record for any women’s college basketball game, the third record set in the 2024 tournament in a game featuring Caitlin Clark. But it was South Carolina, with a far superior team coached by Dawn Staley, that finished a perfect season and captured its third title.
The 18.7 million outpaces every men’s college basketball game since 2019, and it’s better than every NBA Finals game since Warriors-Cavaliers Game 5 in 2017.
It’s also the 24th most-watched telecast of 2024. It would have landed at No. 64 in 2023.
And there’s more. The game did better than every Kentucky Derby since 1983, and the final round of every Masters tournament since 2001.
The question now becomes whether the momentum can be sustained without Clark. The sport needs star players to continue to thrive.
It also bodes well for the WNBA, which will surely get a lift from Clark’s arrival next season. And it’s a lesson for all other sports. Cultivate, embrace, and market your star players. They will be the rising tide that will lift not just all boats but the entire ocean.