{"id":706054,"date":"2026-04-08T22:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T22:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/706054\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T22:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T22:53:14","slug":"2026-ncaa-basketball-finals-tv-ratings-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/706054\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 NCAA Basketball Finals TV Ratings Rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tA pair of powerhouse matchups in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/ncaa\/\" id=\"auto-tag_ncaa_1\" data-tag=\"ncaa\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NCAA<\/a> basketball championships resulted in big audiences for the men\u2019s and women\u2019s finals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBoth games showed year-to-year ratings gains \u2014 which is particularly notable for the men\u2019s side, as Monday\u2019s final aired on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/tnt-sports\/\" id=\"auto-tag_tnt-sports_1\" data-tag=\"tnt-sports\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TNT Sports<\/a> rather than CBS; the broadcast network\u2019s years with the title game typically bring in larger audiences. Michigan\u2019s 69-63 win over Connecticut Monday night averaged 18.3 million viewers on TBS, TNT and TruTV, up a little from the 18.1 million who watched the 2025 title game on CBS (with the caveat that Nielsen has added a big data component to its ratings measurement this season). Monday\u2019s telecast improved by about 23 percent over the last time TNT Sports carried the championship in 2024 and was the most watched men\u2019s title game since 2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe women\u2019s championship game Sunday afternoon on ABC and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/espn\/\" id=\"auto-tag_espn_1\" data-tag=\"espn\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN<\/a>, meanwhile, delivered 9.88 million viewers who watched UCLA thump South Carolina, 79-51. The game grew about 16 percent from 8.5 million viewers last year and finished as the third most-watched women\u2019s final on record, behind the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/tv\/tv-news\/south-carolina-iowa-ncaa-womens-final-tv-ratings-record-1235868790\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">record-setting 2024 game<\/a> (18.87 million viewers) and just off the 9.9 million for the 2023 championship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe men\u2019s Final Four averaged 14.2 million viewers, down about 8 percent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/tv\/tv-news\/2025-mens-final-four-tv-ratings-1236182948\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">from last year<\/a>. Both games (UConn-Illinois and Michigan-Arizona) finished within a couple hundred thousand viewers of the average. The men\u2019s tournament as a whole averaged 10.9 million viewers across CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV, up 7 percent from 2025 and the second highest average since 1994.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFinal Four games in the women\u2019s bracket averaged about 5.2 million viewers, including altcasts on ESPN2, up 33 percent from a year ago. The two matchups (South Carolina-UConn and UCLA-Texas) rank in the top five women\u2019s Final Four games since ESPN began airing the tournament in 1996.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of powerhouse matchups in the NCAA basketball championships resulted in big audiences for the men\u2019s and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,130,7456,231,772,1544,1107,9695],"class_list":{"0":"post-706054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-espn","11":"tag-march-madness","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-basketball","14":"tag-ncaab","15":"tag-tnt-sports","16":"tag-tv-ratings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116371548160792146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706054","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=706054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}