NCAA women’s semifinals drew third-biggest viewing audience of last 30 years

The women’s national semifinals drew the third-biggest viewing audience over the last 30 years.

ESPN PR shared the numbers on its X (formerly Twitter) account on Saturday. South Carolina’s win over Texas averaged 3.6 million viewers, peaking at 4.6 million. UConn’s win over UCLA, meanwhile, averaged 4.1 million and peaked at 4.7. Collectively, that made the semifinals the third-most watched since 1995. Individually, they were the ninth and fifth, most-watched games on ESPN (and its platforms), respectively.

Friday, ESPN delivered the third-best #NCAAWBB National Semifinals in 30 years 🏀 pic.twitter.com/cCoD7z545T

— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) April 5, 2025

As far as what those numbers mean, it’s a little bit of a good news, bad news situation.

Starting with the bad news, while it was the third-most watched semifinal of the last 30 years, the top two came in the previous two years. Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch detailed that the 2025 semifinals were down from 2023 and significantly down from 2024.

“Friday’s NCAA women’s basketball national semifinals averaged 3.9 million viewers across the ESPN networks, per Nielsen fast-nationals — trailing only the past two years as the highest average since ESPN began carrying the event exclusively in 1995,” Lewis said. “Viewership fell 65 percent from last year’s record-high of 11.0 million and a more modest 13% from 4.5 million in 2023.”

Now for the good news. While the 2025’s viewership numbers trail behind both 2023 and 2024, they are well up from 2022.

“Compared to the previous Final Four that did not involve Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes — three years ago in 2022 — viewership increased 44% from 2.7 million,” Lewis wrote.

Losing Clark to the WNBA was a hit to the overall viewership of women’s college basketball. But the improvement over just three years ago does point to an immense increase in the overall interest in the sport.