NCAA men’s title game audience up despite move from broadcast to cable

Perhaps it is too early to write the obituaries for championship sporting events on cable.

Monday’s Michigan-UConn NCAA men’s basketball tournament national championship averaged an 8.8 rating and 18.3 million viewers across TBS, TNT, truTV and HBO Max, down 4% in ratings but up 1% in viewership from Florida-Houston on CBS last year (9.2, 18.1M) and officially the most-watched title game since Virginia-Texas Tech on CBS in 2019 (19.4M). Ratings increased 20% and viewership 23% from the previous title game on cable, UConn-Purdue in 2024 (7.6, 14.8M).

The Wolverines’ win, which peaked with 20.4 million viewers in the 11 PM ET quarter-hour, was the second-straight cable-exclusive national championship to post an increase in viewership over the prior year on CBS, joining the 2024 game (which was also up 1%).

That distinction comes with some important caveats. The 1% increase over last year is well within the margin that would be explained by Nielsen’s shift last fall to a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Beyond “Big Data,” Nielsen has steadily been increasing its out-of-home viewing sample since adding that data to its estimates in 2020 — only maxing out last year — meaning that few if any title games this decade have not benefited from a methodological lift over the prior year.

Though it is a virtual lock that last year’s game had a larger audience all things being equal, it is also no small feat that viewership held up well enough for methodology to matter. The conventional wisdom — backed up by decades of data — is that shifting an event from broadcast to cable comes at the cost of sacrificing viewership. At least officially, that has not been the case in recent years for the NCAA men’s national championship.

The title game had a 26.7 share, but that was actually down 8% from last year — bucking an industry-wide trend this decade that has seen sports viewership account for greater and greater percentages of a declining linear TV audience.

Saturday’s national semifinals averaged a combined 6.1 rating and 14.2 million viewers on the TNT Sports networks, down 8% from last year’s 15.5 million on CBS, though up 11% from the previous cable-exclusive edition in 2024. Michigan’s blowout of Arizona had a 6.2 rating and 14.3 million viewers, preceded by UConn-Illinois at a 5.9 and 14.2 million, marking viewership declines of 12 and 4 percent respectively from last year (Houston-Duke: 16.3M; Florida-Auburn: 14.8M).

CBS parent company Paramount is seeking regulatory approval for its acquisition of TNT parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, which upon closing would combine CBS Sports and TNT Sports under the same umbrella. TNT Sports is set to carry the 2028, 2030 and 2032 Final Four and National Championship under the current March Madness rights deal, but it is not clear whether that would — or could — be reevaluated.

If the men’s title game continues to air on the TNT Sports networks, it would be one of the only major championship events regularly airing on cable. The NCAA women’s basketball title game began airing on ABC in 2023 and is now contractually required to air on the broadcast network. And this year marked the final time that the College Football Playoff National Championship aired exclusively on ESPN, with ABC set to simulcast the game starting this season.

The final cable-exclusive CFP title game — Indiana-Miami in January — averaged more than 30 million viewers, one of only four total national title games to top the 30 million mark since the beginning of the Bowl Championship Series (though all of the previous methodological caveats apply).

The full NCAA men’s basketball tournament averaged a combined 10.9 million viewers per window across CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV — up 7% from last year and behind only 2015 (11.3M) as the highest average since 1994. (Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is mere months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes generally skew comparisons to past years.)