While nobody expected women’s college hoops to match last season’s Caitlin Clark-fueled viewership numbers, the sport has held its own this season across a number of networks.
ESPN networks are seeing the best season of women’s college hoops since 2008-09, averaging 280,000 viewers across ESPN, ABC, ESPN2 and ESPNU (87 games). That’s up 3% from last year and 41% from two seasons ago (ESPN did not air many Caitlin Clark regular season games last season). ESPN on its own averaged 511,000 viewers for games, with the anchor cable network up 13%.
There were 15 games across those ESPN networks averaging over 500,000 viewers, the most in a single season. Three games were over 1 million, led by UConn-South Carolina (1.8 million) and LSU-Texas (1.7 million) on Feb. 16 on ABC. Those two games were the company’s best women’s college hoops regular-season games since 2010.
Across the sport, ESPN had seven of the top-10 women’s games this season.
On Saturday, Fox carried the Big East Women’s Tournament semifinals for the first time. UConn-Villanova averaged 748,000 viewers, while the other semifinal (Creighton-Seton Hall) averaged 394,000 viewers. FS1 carried UConn’s win on Monday in the women’s final, drawing 492,000 viewesrs in primetime, marking Fox Sports' best final yet for the women’s event. Overall, the tourney across Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 269,000 viewers -- a record for Fox Sports and up 74% from last season.
The best women’s conference title game belonged to CBS, which had UCLA’s win over USC late on Sunday afternoon. That 1.44 million viewership also marks the second-best audience for a Big Ten women’s title game on record, behind only Clark and Iowa’s win last year (3.02 million). Big Ten Network also had its second-best women’s tourney on record (210,000 viewers over 10 games), but down from 361,000 last year (still up 141% from two seasons ago). Iowa women had the two best BTN audiences during the conference tournament, reflecting a trend seen during the 2024-25 regular season.
The next test will be during the Women’s NCAA Tournament, which will air on ESPN networks.
