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The Florida Gators men’s basketball team brought home its first national title in 18 years Monday in the most-watched NCAA national championship game since 2019.
The Florida-Houston matchup averaged 18.1 million viewers on CBS, up 22% from the year prior. The audience peaked with around 21.1M viewers as the nail-biting game, in which the Gators trailed for a majority of the time, was concluding.
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That caps a successful Final Four weekend for the NCAA tournament, averaging 16.4M viewers for the three games — its best in eight years. March Madness viewership was up 3% year-over-year, averaging 10.2M viewers across TBS, CBS, TNT and TruTV.
Houston-Duke drew the bigger audience of the two Final Four games with 16M tuning in, marking a 13% increase from last year. Florida-Auburn drew 14.6M, which was actually the most-watched early Final Four game since 2017, up 27% from last year. The two games averaged 15.3M viewers, up 19% year-over-year.
The women’s championship showdown between UConn and South Carolina also delivered a strong audience on ESPN, averaging 8.5M viewers, though that was ultimately down from last year’s record breaking audience. Per Nielsen, the game, which ended up being a blowout win for the Huskies, peaked with 9.8M viewers.
ESPN says that’s the third largest audience for the women’s championship on the network since its exclusive rights agreement began in 1996. It trails behind last year’s Iowa-South Carolina matchup and 2023’s LSU-Iowa.
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