The Florida Gators males’s basketball workforce introduced house its first nationwide title in 18 years on Monday within the most-watched Nationwide Championship recreation since 2019.
The Florida-Houston matchup averaged 18.1M viewers on CBS, which was up 22% from the yr prior. The viewers peaked with round 21.1M viewers because the nail-biting recreation, by which the Gators trailed for a majority of the time, was concluding.
That caps a profitable Closing 4 weekend for the NCAA, averaging 16.4M viewers for the three video games — its finest in eight years. March Insanity viewership was up 3% year-over-year, averaging 10.2M viewers throughout TBS, CBS, TNT and TruTV.
Houston-Duke drew the larger viewers of the 2 Closing 4 video games with 16M tuning in, marking a 13% improve from final yr. Florida-Auburn drew 14.6M, which was really the most-watched early Closing 4 recreation since 2017, up 27% from final yr. The 2 video games averaged 15.3M viewers, up 19% year-over-year.
The ladies’s championship showdown between UConn and South Carolina additionally delivered a powerful viewers on ESPN, averaging 8.5M viewers, although that was finally down from final yr’s report breaking viewers. Per Nielsen, the sport peaked with 9.8M viewers.
ESPN says that’s the third largest viewers for the ladies’s championship on the community since its unique rights settlement started in 1996. It trails behind final yr’s Iowa-South Carolina matchup and 2023’s LSU-Iowa.
