On Tuesday night, the top-ranked Connecticut Huskies men’s basketball team traveled to Omaha, Nebraska. The Huskies battled the 15th-ranked Creighton Bluejays. This Top 15 showdown proved to be more than enough for college hoops fanatics.
On Thursday, Fox Sports PR revealed the ratings for the game. It turns out that the Big East programs made some history. The Creighton-UConn telecast became the most-watched Big East men’s basketball game on FS1 ever.
Fox Sports PR said the game drew an average of 709,000 viewers. Other key metrics have yet to be revealed.
“Creighton’s win in Omaha over top-ranked UConn scored 709,000 viewers Tuesday – the most watched Big East men’s basketball game ever on FS1,” the Fox Sports PR account posted.
https://twitter.com/FOXSportsPR/status/1760726715880624442
Big East men’s basketball ratings this year have been just okay. The two most-watched games before Tuesday night’s affair between UConn and Creighton interestingly took place not on the weekend, but on a Friday night. UConn played in what’s now the second-most watched game of the year earlier this January against Butler. That game drew 503,000 viewers on FS1, according to the Big East TV Ratings X account, which has tracked the conference’s television ratings all season.
So, in turn, the UConn-Creighton telecast made history. The high that UConn-Butler reached was only topped by one of the conference’s biggest tilts from their Fox Sports era. Back on February 4, 2016, top-ranked Villanova played fifth-ranked Xavier at the Musketeers’ home of Cintas Center in Cincinnati. That game averaged 538,000 viewers, which stood as the high mark for the last eight years.
Last Friday’s UConn-Butler game, which averaged 503,000 viewers, is the most-watched Big East conference matchup since #1 Villanova played #5 Xavier on February 4th, 2016, on FS1, which averaged 538K viewers.
— Big East TV Ratings (@BigEastRatings) January 8, 2024
Connecticut being the common denominator this season isn’t terribly surprising. UConn’s pre-American and post-American conference runs have been an obvious boon for the conference. The Huskies have not only become a national power, somehow some way out of Storrs, Connecticut, but they’ve been one of the best programs of the 21st century. They won the National Championship last season and appear poised to attempt to try it again. Clearly, they have resounding interest and attention, especially considering how much of an increase there was.
The Big East is an outlier right now. Amid the climate shifts, which already impacted the conference once before, it still stands tall as a strong basketball conference. While everyone remains in on football, the Big East continues humming along, setting their pace, and succeeding too. Whatever impacts that might have going forward are still to be determined. But the conference and Fox can boast for a little while now.
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022