In a milestone for women’s college basketball, a matchup of the past two national champions was the most-watched sporting event of a night that included the NBA on TNT.
Thursday’s LSU-South Carolina women’s college basketball game averaged 1.56 million viewers on ESPN, trailing only Iowa-Ohio State on NBC last weekend (1.86M) as the most-watched regular season women’s game since Stanford snapped UConn’s 90-game winning streak in 2010 (2.11M). The LSU-South Carolina rivalry accounts for two of the top three as their Super Bowl Sunday matchup last year averaged 1.47 million on ESPN.
The Gamecocks’ win, which peaked with 2.1 million viewers, delivered the largest sports audience of the day and topped the competing Celtics-Heat NBA regular season game on TNT by 12% (1.38M). Viewership more-than-doubled UConn-Tennessee in the same window last year (656K).
The Celtics’ rout of the Heat declined 15% from Knicks-Celtics on the same January night last year (1.64M). (Compared to the equivalent night of last season, which featured a Warriors-Celtics NBA Finals rematch, viewership fell 43% from 2.44 million.)
The Kings-Warriors nightcap averaged 1.39 million, up 9% from Mavericks-Suns on the same night last year (1.28M). (Compared to Nets-Suns on the equivalent date of last season, viewership increased 12% from 1.24 million.)
(As is no surprise given the younger demographics of the NBA relative to college basketball, the NBA games were the day’s top sporting events in adults 18-49 with a 0.48 and 0.45 in those demos. South Carolina-LSU had a 0.32 in the demo.)
Outside of basketball, the day’s top sporting event was Jannik Sinner’s upset of Novak Djokovic in an Australian Open men’s semifinal. The match, which had a direct lead-in from LSU-South Carolina, averaged 760,000 viewers — up 79% from Stefanos Tsitsipas-Karen Khachanov last year (425K).
Further down the list, the women’s short program in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships averaged 358,000 on USA Network — up 48% from last year (242K). The second round of the PGA Tour event at Torrey Pines averaged 280,000, down 16% from last year’s 335,000. Men’s college basketball topped out at 270,000 for San Francisco-Gonzaga on ESPN2 (-21%), preceded by SMU-North Texas at 181,000 (+15%).
Thursday, January 25 sports viewership
