New York
CNN
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For the primary time in its 42-year historical past, extra individuals watched the ladies’s NCAA basketball closing than the boys’s.
The overall variety of viewers for Sunday’s women’s national championship game between South Carolina and Iowa was 18.9 million, peaking at 24.1 million within the sport’s closing quarter-hour, in response to Nielsen. It was the most-watched girls’s school basketball sport ever and doubled the earlier 12 months’s 9.9 million viewers.
On Monday, the College of Connecticut’s victory over Purdue within the males’s closing drew 14.8 million viewers, Nielsen mentioned. That was up a smidge from the 14.7 million who watched final 12 months’s males’s championship sport, however fell 4 million viewers wanting the ladies’s closing.
The most important purpose why the ladies outrated the boys this 12 months: Iowa sensation Caitlin Clark, who scored 30 factors within the Hawkeyes’ 87-75 defeat by the undefeated Gamecocks.
Clark captivated followers all 12 months, setting data on the court docket and driving the ladies’s sport to viewership data all through the common season and the March Insanity event. Clark completed the 2023-2024 season as the best scoring collegiate basketball participant in historical past, outpacing Louisiana State sensation (and future NBA legend and Corridor of Famer) Pete Maravich, who had set the previous record in 1970.
Clark had been taking part in with a chip on her shoulder all season after her Hawkeyes misplaced within the finals the earlier 12 months to LSU — a crew she and Iowa vanquished earlier within the event. She is broadly anticipated to be the highest decide within the WNBA draft subsequent week.
To place the ladies’s championship sport viewership in perspective, it outrated each 2023 World Collection sport and each NBA finals sport from final 12 months, in response to Nielsen.
The success of this 12 months’s event led to many scorching takes in sports activities media about girls’s sports activities lastly reaching equal standing with males’s. However Clark’s exit from the school sport and certain rookie season on the dreadful Indiana Fever — which has the primary decide within the WNBA draft — will put these theories to the take a look at later this 12 months.
The WNBA remains financially miniscule, bringing in a reported $200 million in income — in comparison with the NBA’s greater than $10 billion. ESPN’s SportsCenter offered 91 seconds of protection for the typical WNBA sport, in comparison with 266 seconds for the typical NBA sport, in response to Nielsen. The WNBA Finals final 12 months averaged simply 728,000 viewers a sport.
Nonetheless, the league is rising, and a celeb with nationwide identify recognition and star energy might work to vary the WNBA’s fortunes. Thus far, even earlier than Clark has been drafted, the excitement is boosting ticket gross sales.
Ticket reseller TickPick mentioned WNBA ticket gross sales for subsequent season are up 222% from this level final 12 months, and Fever tickets have already outpaced final 12 months’s whole by 86%. And Fever house video games are setting again followers $81 a ticket — up from simply $45 for final season.
Away video games gained’t get you any assist — a possibility to observe Caitlin Clark play in a rival metropolis prices $108 on common, TickPick mentioned, up 151% from final 12 months’s $43 common ticket value to observe the Fever play an away sport.
Oh, yeah, and within the males’s school basketball closing Monday, the Huskies gained their second-straight championship, beating the Boilermakers, who have been of their first closing since 1969. No matter.