TV Ratings: NCAA Basketball Tournament Net Wins vs. 2025

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A pair of tight matchups in the NCAA Basketball Tournament drew big crowds for the men’s and women’s finals.

Both games showed ratings gains from year to year — especially notable for the men’s team, as Monday’s final was broadcast on TNT Sports instead of CBS; Broadcast network years with the title game typically attract larger audiences. Michigan’s 69-63 win over Connecticut on Monday night averaged 18.3 million viewers on TBS, TNT and TruTV, up slightly from the 18.1 million who watched the 2025 title game on CBS (with the caveat that Nielsen added a big data component to its ratings measurement this season). Monday’s telecast improved about 23 percent compared to the last time TNT Sports held the championship in 2024 and the men’s title match was the most watched since 2019.

Meanwhile, the women’s championship game Sunday afternoon on ABC and ESPN brought in 9.88 million viewers who watched UCLA beat South Carolina, 79-51. The game grew nearly 16 percent from last year’s 8.5 million viewers and finished as the third most-watched women’s final ever, behind the record-setting 2024 game (18.87 million viewers) and far behind the 2023 tournament’s 9.9 million viewers.

The men’s Final Four averaged 14.2 million viewers, down about 8 percent from last year. Both games (UConn-Illinois and Michigan-Arizona) finished within a few hundred thousand viewers on average. The men’s tournament as a whole averaged 10.9 million viewers across CBS, TBS, TNT and True TV, up 7 percent from 2025 and the second-highest average since 1994.

The women’s Final Four averaged about 5.2 million viewers, including broadcasts on ESPN2, up 33 percent from last year. Both matchups (South Carolina-UConn and UCLA-Texas) have ranked in the top five women’s Final Four games since ESPN began broadcasting the tournament in 1996.

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