For the first time ever, women’s basketball has advanced further than men’s!
For the first time ever, the NCWAA Women’s Basketball Final attracted more viewers to New York’s CNNN than the men’s game in its 42-year history.
The South Carolina vs. Iowa National Championship game on Sunday attracted 18.9 million people overall, with as many as 24.1 million tuning in for the last 15 minutes of play, according to Nielsen. With twice as many people watching as the previous year’s 9.9 million viewers, it was the most viewed women’s collegiate basketball game ever.
According to Nielson, 14.8 million people watched Purdue’s men’s final triumph over Connecticut on Monday. This was still 4 million fewer viewers than the women’s final, but it was marginally more than the 14.7 million who watched the men’s championship game the previous year.
The main factor behind women’s success this season against men was Iowa phenom Caitlin Clarke, who scored 30 points in an undefeated 87-75 victory over Hockey’s Gamecocks.
Over the course of the season, Clarke captivated spectators by breaking records on the court and bringing in record crowds to women’s regular season and March Madness tournament games. After finishing 2023–2024, Clarke surpassed Pete Maravich, a sensation from Louisiana State who would go on to become an NBA legend and be inducted into the Hall of Fame, to become the all-time highest scorer in collegiate basketball history. Maravich had held the record since 1970.
Clarke played the entire season with a grudge on her shoulder after losing to LSU in last year’s hockey final—a team that she and Iowa had previously defeated in the tournament. She is anticipated to be selected first in next week’s WNBA draft.
To put the women’s championship game’s viewership in perspective, Nielsen reports that it outpaced both the 2023 World Series and the whole 2023 NBA Finals season.
The success of this year’s competition spurred conversations in the sports media about finally granting women’s sports the same prominence as men’s. Nevertheless, those theories will be put to the test at the conclusion of this year due to Clarke’s absence from college games and his probable rookie season on a struggling Indiana Fever club, who owns the first choice in the WNBA draft.
WNBA revenue is $200 million, while NBA revenue is above $10 billion. As a result, WNBA is financially smaller than NBA. Nielsen reports that an average WNBA game took up 91 seconds of coverage on ESPN’s SportsCenter, but an average NBA game took up 266 seconds. Just 728,000 people watched each game of the WNBA Finals last year on average.
However, the league is expanding, and the WNBA’s destiny might be altered by a well-known brand and strong star power. Prior to Clarke’s draft, there is already talk about increasing ticket sales.
According to ticket reseller TickPick, sales of tickets for WNBA games this season are 222% greater than those of the previous season, while sales of Fever tickets have already surpassed last year’s total sales by 86%. Also, ticket refunds for Fever home games total $81 per ticket, which is more than $45 for the previous campaign.
You won’t benefit from watching a game from a distance: according to TickPick, the average price to see Caitlin Clarke play in a rival city is $108, while the average cost of a Fever game ticket this year is 151% higher than it was last year, at $43.
By the way, the Huskies won their first championship since 1969 when they defeated the Boilermakers in Monday’s men’s NCAA basketball final. Whatever it may be.
