UConn-Duke thriller posts average viewership as Sweet 16, Elite Eight benefit from Nielsen lift

UConn’s thrilling comeback win over Duke during last Sunday’s Elite Eight delivered on the court, but wasn’t a ratings monster by any stretch.

Braylon Mullins’ last-second three to lift the Huskies over the Blue Devils and complete a 19-point comeback averaged 13.4 million viewers in the Sunday evening window on CBS, the network announced on Tuesday. Per Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, that’s good for the third-largest audience for any pre-Final Four game since 2021, but falls short of far less remarkable games in the same window, like North Carolina’s route of Saint Peter’s four years ago (13.6 million viewers).

UConn’s win did see a year-over-year increase of 15% versus last season’s Michigan State-Auburn game (11.7 million viewers). However, it still ranks only sixth among the eight comparable Sunday evening Elite Eight telecasts in the past decade, per SMW.

Saturday’s Elite Eight contests on TBS and truTV both posted year-over-year increases. Arizona’s win over Purdue averaged 10.1 million viewers, up slightly from Duke’s 2025 rout of Alabama (9.8 million viewers). The nightcap, which saw Illinois beat Iowa, averaged 8.2 million viewers, up 9% versus Florida-Texas Tech a year ago (7.5 million viewers).

Viewership for Sunday afternoon’s Michigan-Tennessee game was not immediately available.

Overall, CBS Sports and TNT Sports are still posting multi-decade highs for this tournament, in part due to changes in Nielsen’s methodologies.

Through the Elite Eight round, CBS and TNT are averaging 10.3 million viewers per window across TBS, CBS, TNT, and truTV, up 9% versus last year and the highest mark through this point in the tournament since 1993. The early primetime window during the Sweet 16, which featured Duke-St. John’s and Michigan-Alabama averaged 14.2 million viewers, making that window’s most-watched year since 1992, up 38% from last year.

This year is the first in which the tournament is being measured under Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology, which collects data from connected devices in addition to its traditional panel measurement. The change, implemented in September 2025, has generally increased viewership of live sporting events compared to prior years. Notably, this is the second year the tournament has been measured using Nielsen’s expanded out-of-home sample.

Some of the marginal increases, such as Saturday’s Elite Eight games, could reasonably be explained primarily by Nielsen’s new methods. But the larger increases, such as the 38% bump for Friday’s Sweet 16 games, cannot be attributed solely to the Nielsen changes.