Iowa once more attracts document scores in Closing 4 win over UConn

BRISTOL, Conn. — Iowa’s 71-69 victory over UConn on the girls’s Closing 4 on Friday evening averaged 14.2 million viewers on ESPN, making it the most-viewed girls’s basketball recreation on document and the most important viewers for an ESPN basketball broadcast.

The earlier girls’s hoops mark was 12.3 million for final Monday’s Iowa-LSU recreation within the Elite Eight. Recreation 7 of the 2018 NBA Jap Convention finals between Cleveland and Boston was ESPN’s most-watched basketball recreation at 13.51 million.

The Iowa-UConn matchup can be one of many most-viewed video games in any sport aside from school soccer and the NFL over the previous couple years. Final yr’s NCAA males’s basketball title recreation between San Diego State and UConn averaged 14.79 million.

The Hawkeyes recreation, which noticed the viewers peak at 17 million, will seemingly go down as one of many prime 50 primetime telecasts of 2024. It might have completed thirty second on final yr’s listing.

It is usually ESPN’s second-highest viewers for a non-football broadcast. The US-Portugal match throughout group play within the 2014 males’s soccer World Cup averaged 18.22 million.

The final NBA recreation to attract no less than 14 million viewers was Golden State’s title-clinching victory over Boston in Recreation 6 of the 2022 NBA Finals (14.22 million).

Clark’s 5 March Insanity video games on ESPN and ABC have averaged 8.3 million viewers. Iowa will face South Carolina for the nationwide championship Sunday afternoon on ABC.

South Carolina’s 78-59 victory over NC State averaged 7.1 million viewers, making it the third-most-watched girls’s nationwide semifinal since data began being stored in 1992.

The earlier document for the most-viewed semifinal was Stanford vs. Virginia on CBS in 1992 (8.1 million).

Friday’s two video games averaged 10.8 million viewers, a 138% improve over final yr.