Regular-season college basketball reached new viewership highs in the 2025-26 season, with blue bloods like Duke, Michigan State, and North Carolina leading the way.
Viewership increases can be found across networks. CBS averaged 1.42 million viewers for its regular-season broadcasts, a 10% increase from last year, led by a Thanksgiving matchup between Duke and Arkansas. Fox averaged 1.21 million viewers, up 38%.
On cable, both ESPN and FS1 regular-season viewership were up 25%. Full numbers for ESPN regular-season viewership are not yet available, though FS1 games averaged 234,000 viewers. This is the first year of Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel viewership standard. The new standard has generally increased viewership compared to prior years.
When comparing this season’s panel-only numbers (without Big Data) to last season’s panel-only measurements, college basketball still notched a year-over-year increase. The Big Data bump helped ESPN slightly more than it helped FS1.
In February, for example, Big Data gave about a 16% boost to viewership for ESPN compared to a 14% boost for FS1. That is less than the 25% total viewership increase for both networks, per the TV Media Blog Substack. Even still, there were also a handful of instances where Big Data actually decreased viewership compared to panel numbers.
Blue bloods certainly played a significant role in increasing college basketball viewership. Of the 10 most-watched regular-season college basketball games so far this season, Duke has played in four of them, while Michigan, Michigan State, and North Carolina have played in three. Every Duke-North Carolina and Michigan-Michigan State matchup made the top ten. The Thanksgiving games, featuring Duke-Arkansas on CBS and Michigan State-North Carolina on Fox, were the two most-watched games, averaging 6.8 million and 6.5 million viewers, respectively. Duke-Michigan was the most-watched non-Thanksgiving matchup with 4.3 million viewers on ESPN.
Duke-Michigan was played in February, which is traditionally the middle of conference play. Both Fox and ESPN dabbled in airing major non-conference matchups in February. The weekend before Duke-Michigan, Fox aired a Virginia-Ohio State matchup from Nashville. That game averaged 853,000 viewers on Fox. As a result of the strong viewership, these kinds of non-conference matchups are expected to nearly double next year.
Finally, it remains to be seen whether or not these viewership increases can extend to March Madness. Last year, March Madness averaged 9.4 million viewers per window across the first two rounds, a 32-year high. Chalk dominated last year’s tournament, which perhaps helped viewership a bit in the later rounds as well. A Final Four comprised entirely of No. 1 seeds led to the most-watched national semifinals since 2017.
One could expect Big Data to chip in a little extra for this year’s tournament compared to 2025, but it’s no guarantee that Big Data alone will be enough to surpass last year’s marks, especially if some of the aforementioned blue bloods are knocked out earlier than anticipated.
About Manny Soloway
Manny Soloway is a Iowa based writer focusing on TV ratings. He is also the founder of the TV Media Blog substack.