Iowa-LSU championship game obliterated previous women’s basketball TV ratings

The television ratings for the LSU-Iowa national-championship women’s basketball game annihilated the old record-highs.

The average of 9.9 million viewers on ABC Sunday afternoon (it peaked at 12.6 million across all platforms) was more than last season’s Cotton, Orange and Sugar bowls. It was more than the season-average for the NFL’s Thursday night telecasts on Prime last year.

There hasn’t been an NHL Stanley Cup Final game with as many viewers in the last 50 years.

And, needless to say, it’s the most-watched women’s basketball game. The previous record is believed to be 8.1 million for the 1992 Virginia-Stanford championship game on CBS. ESPN had the title game from 1996 through 2022, and its top rating was 5.68 million, in 2002 for Connecticut-Oklahoma.

The two semifinal games, led by Iowa-South Carolina, also broke viewing records.

No game on the ESPN platform has ever had higher streaming numbers than Iowa-LSU. The game had over four million more viewers than South Carolina’s 2022 title game win over UConn.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com