When Caitlin Clark moved on from college basketball to the WNBA a year ago, devotees and casual followers alike wondered what the impact would be on the college game.
There were still plenty of well-known players and good teams, no doubt. But Clark’s halo over the game was so big that it was hard to know just how this season would compare — especially on the most-talked-about metric of all, TV ratings.
For all the major moments the season provided, a true answer wouldn’t be clear until the season was complete. And now that the nets have been cut down, the answer has arrived.
In fact, things went quite well.
ESPN reported that it had its most-watched regular season in 16 years, even without conference games from two of the sport’s biggest stars: Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers in the Big East and Southern California’s JuJu Watkins.
“To me, it just shows that the depth is there — the amount of quality teams and names has increased,” said Dan Margulis, ESPN’s senior director of programming and acquisitions. He oversees the network’s women’s college basketball coverage.
ESPN’s main rights are with the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conferences, and they provided a bounty. The SEC had reigning champion South Carolina, star-studded challengers Texas and LSU, and a resurgent Tennessee. In the ACC, Hannah Hidalgo and Olivia Miles’ Notre Dame was challenged by Duke and N.C. State, though usual power Stanford faltered in its first year in the conference.
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The network televised a series of big games on Thursday nights and made Sunday a destination day during conference play. Saturday has long been a destination for the men’s game, and ESPN saw an opening to make Sunday bigger for the women.
“It may have started as that’s what’s available for consistency, but now we’re able to really focus on getting the right matchups,” Margulis said. “Like anything, if you’re able to be consistent, that ends up being more impactful than picking and choosing your spots. Because now, it’s a matter of ‘OK, I know if I go on Sunday to ESPN or maybe ABC, I’m going to get a high-quality women’s matchup with a good environment.’ ”
ABC’s big turn came on Feb. 16, the Sunday after the Super Bowl: UConn at South Carolina and Texas at LSU. Both games got a lot of hype, lived up to it, and delivered 1.8 million and 1.7 million viewers, respectively.
“It was the perfect doubleheader,” Margulis said. “Obviously, we geared a lot toward it. There’s promotion that goes on around it. … We’ve circled that date in the future, too, [for] how do we get big games there.”
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He added that within the network’s offices, “there’s certainly way more buy-in than existed years ago” to putting women’s games on big stages.
Fox, which has rights to the Big East and Big Ten, put 18 games on its broadcast network. Five got prime-time treatment, including Southern Cal’s visit to UConn that drew nearly 2.3 million viewers — the biggest number on any channel in the regular season. The network also had the Trojans’ regular season-ending visit UCLA for first place in the Big Ten.
“Putting games in prime time and on free-to-air broadcast is a deliberate choice,” Fox Sports vice president Derek Crocker said. “When you believe in the future of a sport, you make it accessible to everyone.”
The many women’s games on cable channel FS1 regularly featured Southern Cal, UConn, traditional power Maryland, and UCLA. The Bruins’ moments included a November upset of South Carolina that launched them into the elite.
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Across all its channels, Fox’s audiences combined for the second-most-watched season, up 19% from 2022-23. Last season, when Fox aired many Iowa games, unsurprisingly was No. 1.
“That kind of momentum speaks to the sport’s incredible growth trajectory and why we’re confident in where it’s headed,” Crocker said.
NBC, which has Big Ten rights and started a new deal with the Big East this season, put most of its games on the subscription streaming platform Peacock. UCLA and Southern Cal were featured often, including their game against each other at USC’s Galen Center. That annoyed some who had to look for it.
But the network picked a few games for the broadcast channel, and they were big ones: Notre Dame at Southern Cal, the Trojans’ visit to preseason-ranked Indiana, and UCLA at Maryland. A spokesperson said the games averaged 670,000 viewers.
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CBS put only one women’s game on its broadcast network, but it was a big one: the Big Ten women’s tournament title game, USC-UCLA Round 3. It drew a healthy 1.44 million viewers, ranking No. 4 among all women’s games in the season at that point.
In the NCAA Tournament, ESPN’s coverage drew the third-biggest audience on record, behind only last year and 2004 — Diana Taurasi’s last season at UConn. Though the title game was a an 82-59 blowout win for the Huskies, ABC’s broadcast still drew 8.6 million viewers, also No. 3 all-time. It trailed only the two title games Clark played in, 2023 (9.9 million) and 2024 (18.9 million).
One can debate what audience a closer game might have drawn, but the history books still say plenty. Before 2023, ESPN’s women’s title game record was 5.7 million in 2002, and the 2023 final was the first one on free-to-air broadcast television since CBS’s last one in 1995.
That game, coincidentally the first UConn-Tennessee title game bout (and 2004 remains the last one), drew 7.4 million viewers. CBS’s record was set two years before, when 7.8 million watched a Texas Tech-Ohio State matchup.
This year topped all of that, with Bueckers winning her long-awaited first title and freshman Sarah Strong becoming the game’s new star.
“It’s a sign of the sport’s growth that the floor is now 8.6 million viewers in the championship game,” Margulis said.
Next season will feature Miles at TCU after transferring, and UConn’s Azzi Fudd and Texas’ Rori Harmon choosing one more college year over the WNBA. Hidalgo, Watkins, and Betts also will still be on campus, not yet eligible for the pros. They will keep that floor in a big spotlight and keep it plenty busy.
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