Every network is seeing an uptick in college basketball viewership so far this season, even when standardizing for Nielsen’s updated methodology.
According to a report by Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal, men’s college basketball viewership is up 39% so far this season across the ESPN family of networks, Fox, and CBS. Even removing Nielsen’s new Big Data measurements, the sport has seen a 20% year-over-year increase in panel-only viewership.
Fox has seen the sharpest jump from last year to this year. The network has seen a 71% increase in college basketball viewership compared to the same point last year, utilizing two key NFL lead-ins to help boost its number. Michigan State-North Carolina averaged 6.5 million viewers on Fox immediately following its early-afternoon Thanksgiving NFL game. And just last weekend, Maryland-UCLA secured 2.9 million viewers after the Los Angeles Rams-Carolina Panthers Wild Card game, good for the third most-watched college basketball audience so far this season.
CBS also utilized its Thanksgiving NFL lead-in well, securing the most-watched game of the season thus far with Duke-Arkansas clocking in at 6.8 million viewers. Overall, CBS is averaging 1.81 million viewers per game, its best mark at this point of the season in nine years. All 10 games on the network have surpassed one million viewers, and each has secured double-digit year-over-year increases. Saturday’s Wisconsin-Michigan game averaged 2.0 million viewers, the most-watched game without an NFL lead-in this season.
Over on ESPN, games are up 20% across ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU. ESPN had a particularly strong December, seeing a 61% increase across those networks, including a 42% increase for games broadcast on the flagship ESPN station.
Of course, this news comes amid the release of a bombshell FBI investigation implicating 39 current and former college basketball players of illegal gambling activities, including point shaving. Four of those named in the report have played as recently as this week.
Those named generally played for mid- to low-major schools, the type of which don’t typically air on Nielsen-measured networks. That is to say, it’s unlikely that viewership for the sport will be impacted as a result.
But on an otherwise tough news day for the sport, at least college basketball is getting some decent headlines on the ratings front.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.