Capped by strong viewership for the tournaments' concluding marquee matchups, NCAA rights-holders registered double-digit gains overall for their coverage of the 2022 men's and women's versions of March Madness.
TBS (US), alongside simulcasts on TNT (US) and truTV (US), averaged a combined 18.1 million viewers with their presentations of Kansas' 72-69 win over North Carolina in the men's championship game April 4. The game ranks as the most-watched title tilt on cable.
Kansas-North Carolina tallied a total audience delivery, according to data from Nielsen Holdings PLC and Conviva, 4% higher than Baylor's blowout of Gonzaga in the 2021 championship game on CBS (US).
It also ranks as the third-most-watched college game basketball game on cable, behind the 18.5 million for the April 2 semifinal won by UNC in its first-ever NCAA tournament meeting with rival Duke. That game also represented the last for legendary Blue Devils' coach Mike Krzyzewski, who is retiring. Wisconsin's victory over then-undefeated Kentucky in a 2015 Final Four matchup ranks first with 22.6 million watchers.
Under their rights deal with the NCAA, Warner Media LLC's Turner and Paramount Global's CBS Sports alternate annual coverage of the national semifinals and title game.
All told, over the 67 live games, the 2022 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship averaged 10.7 million viewers across TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV and a 17.0 share, the percentage of TVs in use, both up 13% over 2021. The 17.0 share was the highest for the men's event since 1994, according to the rights-holders.
Streaming platform NCAA March Madness Live set multiple records for the Kansas-UNC championship match-up, headed by the largest audience and most minutes consumed for a single game in the service’s history. The title tilt peaked with 1.6 million concurrent streams, according to Conviva data, topping the previous mark from UNC-Duke two days earlier. This year's men's tournament generated the most live March Madness Live unique users, a 12% bump from the previous mark with the 2019 event.
As to the culmination of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament in Minneapolis, ESPN Inc. networks averaged 4.85 million watchers for South Carolina’s triumph over Connecticut. The April 3 game ranks as the most-watched women's final since 2004 and fourth-largest overall since the sports programmer began airing the event exclusively in 1996.
The matchup's delivery, up 18% from 2021, peaked in the 10 p.m. ET quarter hour with 5.91 million viewers across ESPN (US), ESPN2 (US), ESPNU (US) and ESPN+'s "MegaCast" presentation. The multi-telecast format shares game content across multiple linear and streaming networks with differentiated talent, views and information, with an eye toward expanding overall viewership.
UConn's dethroning of Stanford in the semifinal on April 1 averaged 3.23 million viewers, a 19% advance from 2021, to stand as the most-watched women's semifinal game since Stanford-Baylor in 2012. In the Final Four opener, South Carolina-Louisville averaged 2.16 million viewers, up 27% from last year.
The audience for the three games on Final Four weekend grew 20% year-over-year to an average of 3.46 million from 2021.
Over the course of the full women's tournament, ESPN scored 634,000 viewers per game across ESPN, ABC (US), ESPNews (US), ESPN2 and ESPNU, up 16% over last year's coverage. All told, the event generated 74.6 million hours of content across ESPN platforms, up 6% from 2021.
The 2020 women's and men's tournaments were canceled by the health risks posed by COVID-19.