Women's Fastbreak On SI

2025 NCAA Championship Viewership Falls to New Heights With No Caitlin Clark

The 2025 NCAA Championship game between UConn and South Carolina drew a staggering number of viewers.
Grant Young|
Apr 6, 2025; Tampa, FL, USA; Connecticut Huskies guard Paige Bueckers (5) and South Carolina Gamecocks guard MiLaysia Fulwiley (12) go after the ball during the second half of the national championship of the women's 2025 NCAA tournament at Amalie Arena. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
Apr 6, 2025; Tampa, FL, USA; Connecticut Huskies guard Paige Bueckers (5) and South Carolina Gamecocks guard MiLaysia Fulwiley (12) go after the ball during the second half of the national championship of the women's 2025 NCAA tournament at Amalie Arena. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images | Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

Nobody can deny that the biggest superstar in the women's basketball world is Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, whose stardom started during her time playing college basketball with the Iowa Hawkeyes.

There's arguably no better metric to assess stardom than viewership metrics. And the fact that Clark's Hawkeyes team playing the South Carolina Gamecocks in the 2024 NCAA championship game averaged about 18.7 million viewers and peaked at a staggering 24 million combined on ESPN and ABC (which made it the most-watched sporting event since 2019, aside from football and the Olympics) shows just how much of a star she is.

But women's basketball as a whole continues to grow in conjunction with Clark's explosion on the scene. This has been made apparent with the viewership of the Final Four and championship game of the 2025 NCAA Tournament.

Friday's Final Four was the third most-watched NCAA women's national semifinals since 1995. The South Carolina vs. Texas game drew 3.6 million viewers while the UConn vs. UCLA attracted 4.1 million viewers and peaked at 4.7 million, making it the fifth-most viewed Final Four game on an ESPN platform.

Viewership numbers for the NCAA championship between UConn and South Carolina was revealed on Monday. The game averaged 8.5 million viewers and peaked at 9.8 million, making it the third most-watched women's NCAA national championship game on record, per an X post from ESPN PR.

The 2023 championship game between Clark's Iowa Hawkeyes and Angel Reese's LSU Tigers drew 9.9 million, which is the second-most after 2024.

While this pales in comparison to last year's championship, it's almost double the 2022 championship game between the same two teams, per The Ringer's Seerat Sohi.

We didn't need any further proof of Clark's stardom. The biggest story here is that women's college basketball is clearly still in a fantastic spot, even with the former Hawkeyes star now in the WNBA.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.

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