The 12th annual edition of The Basketball Tournament concluded on Sunday when the Aftershocks defeated Eberlein Drive to claim the $1 million dollar grand prize. But more importantly for the future of the league, viewership around the championship game reached new heights.
According to a press release from TBT, Sunday’s championship game on Fox brought in an average viewership 444,000 viewers. This is a significant increase from last year’s championship, the first TBT tournament that aired on Fox in 2024, which brought in just 266,000 viewers.
In-person attendance for Sunday’s championship game at Charles Koch Arena, the home of the Wichita State Shockers, reached a near record high as well, which is understandable considering the Aftershocks team who won the championship does have four players who played collegiately for the Wichita State.
What winning a championship at HOME looks like in TBT 🌾🌾🌾 pic.twitter.com/dmGKk5965I
— TBT (@thetournament) August 5, 2025
9,029 fans were in attendance for the championship game, which is the second highest in-person gate ever for a TBT game, and outpaces any Wichita State basketball game in the past three seasons.
Overall, the tournament was largely a success outside of just the championship game compared to past years. The vast majority of tournament games that were streamed on YouTube generated 5.6M impressions and were watched by 129% more unique viewers compared to 2024.
Ahead of this year’s tournament, there were certainly concerns about TBT losing its identity a bit by moving away from its initial selling point. In recent years, there have been less and less true “alumni teams” made up specifically of players from one particular university, which was always a staple of the tournament.
With that in mind, this increase in viewership is certainly quite impressive. Especially when you consider the kind of increasingly popular direct competitors that TBT has had to face a number in recent years in the summer basketball space.
The end of NBA Summer League of course overlaps with TBT. But perhaps the biggest competitor to TBT is the WNBA, a league that has of seen a drastic rise in popularity in recent years has also served as a clear challenge to bring in viewers.
Clearly, at least for the time being, there is still plenty of interest around TBT, which should be encouraging for Fox as they enter what will be a third year of covering the event on their network in 2026.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.