{"id":677610,"date":"2026-03-25T03:18:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T03:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/677610\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T03:18:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T03:18:27","slug":"ncaa-tournament-has-best-opening-week-on-record-averaging-10-1-million-viewers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/677610\/","title":{"rendered":"NCAA Tournament has best opening week on record, averaging 10.1 million viewers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"jxTEW Poyse uieav lqtkC HkWF HfYhe kGyAC \">The NCAA Tournament had its best first week on record, averaging 10.1 million viewers through the second round across CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">The <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NCAA Tournament<\/a> had its best first week on record, averaging 10.1 million viewers through the second round across CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \"><a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-mens-bracket\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tournament<\/a> viewership is up 7% from last year, according to Nielsen. CBS and TNT began showing all of the games in 2011 after CBS had done early rounds in regional windows from 1991 through 2010.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The first round on Thursday and Friday averaged 9.5 million viewers \u2014 a 9% increase \u2014 while the second round on Saturday and Sunday averaged 11 million. That is the most-viewed second round since 1993 and a 7% jump from last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Sunday&#8217;s early prime-time window, featuring St. John&#8217;s-Kansas on CBS, Iowa-Florida on TBS and Virginia-Tennessee on TNT, averaged 19.7 million, making it the most-watched window in tournament history for the first week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">AP March Madness: <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NCAA Tournament had its best first week on record, averaging 10.1 million viewers through the second round&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[86235,1297,7,3025,217,325,354,231,772,20001,1544,66],"class_list":["post-677610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-86235","tag-article","tag-basketball","tag-business","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaa-mens-division-i-basketball-championship","tag-ncaab","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116287660145842405","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}