Iowa and Caitlin Clark’s Victory Over LSU Trounces NBA Playoff Ratings

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Warner Todd Huston

This week’s Iowa-LSU game featuring Iowa’s star player Caitlin Clark earned the biggest TV ratings in women’s college basketball history, according to the numbers.

ESPN drew more than 12 million viewers for Monday’s Elite Eight matchup, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Iowa’s 94-87 victory over Louisiana averaged 12.3 million viewers on ESPN, the largest viewership ever for a women’s college basketball game.

The previous record was set over forty years ago when the 1983 title game featuring star player Cheryl Miller earned 11.83 million viewers on CBS.

The paper added that last year’s LSU-Iowa game only drew 9.9 million across ABC and ESPN2.

The game was also a huge ratings winner across all shows on Monday, beating the second most-watched show, NCIS, which earned 5.9 million viewers.

Indeed, Monday’s game racked up a list of impressive top honors.

According to Front Office Sports, the game was the most viewed ESPN college basketball of any kind and even bigger than the viewership of every MLB, NHL, MLS, and NBA game (except one) during last season.

To put this in perspective, last year’s average NBA playoff game drew 5.47 million viewers. So, with Iowa-LSU drawing 12.3 million, the Caitlin Clark-led Hawkeyes and Angel Reese-led Lady Tigers more than doubled the average viewership of the NBA’s most important games.

Women’s college basketball has more than doubled its audience over last year’s finals on EWSPN, averaging more than 1.1 million viewers per game, not including the numbers generated during the Elite Eight matchups.

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