Everyone Watches Women's Sports.

Last year, the NCAA Women’s March Madness championship game between LSU and Iowa averaged 9.9 million viewers and peaked at 12.6 million, marking the most-watched women’s college basketball game of all time.?

On Monday night, LSU and Iowa met again in this year’s Women’s March Madness tournament. Iowa exacted its revenge on LSU from last year, earning the Hawkeyes a trip to the Final Four by winning what many analysts have dubbed the “region of death.”

Monday night’s game averaged 12.3 million viewers and peaked at 16.1 million, shattering the record last set by the same matchup last year. Talk about exponential growth.?

It’s challenging to grasp just how many people tuned into this game, so let’s put it into perspective. Monday Night’s LSU-Iowa rematch drew more viewers than:

• Every women’s college basketball game in history
• Every ESPN broadcasted college basketball game in history
• Every MLB, NHL, and MLS game last season
• Every regular season CFB game last season (except one)
• The 2023 NBA Finals (five game series)
• The 2023 World Series (five game series)
• Every single men’s tournament game this year (minus the incredible NC State-Duke Elite Eight matchup that averaged 15.1 million viewers… and rightfully so!)

The myth that “nobody watches women’s sports” has been debunked time and time again, and there’s even a sold-out T-shirt to prove it.?

This year, the NCAA had the opportunity to change how they packaged the Women’s March Madness tournament after its media rights deal expired back in January. There was talk about if the women’s tournament could get its own media rights deal after proving its value during the record-breaking 2023 tournament. While the new deal nearly triples what the women’s tournament was previously valued at, it still bundles the event with even more championship events than the previous one. Charlie Baker, president of the NCAA, noted that a large part of the decision to keep the women’s tournament bundled involves the fact that removing it from the bundle would devalue the other championships in the package.?

The new valuation makes NCAA Women’s March Madness the most valued women’s sports property in the country, narrowly beating out the NWSL, which also recently inked a media rights deal valued at $60 million a year. The surging state of women’s sports today, paired with the hype the structure of March Madness inevitably brings, makes me question if there could have possibly been a better time for the tournament to garner its own media rights deal than now. Last summer, we saw the Women’s World Cup have a separate media rights deal from the Men’s World Cup for the first time in the event’s history. Although these events operate on a more global scale than women’s college basketball, the Women’s World Cup proved that it could thrive as its own media rights package. When will the seal be broken that gives a women’s college championship its first solo media deal?

Circling back to this year’s tournament, records have already been broken, and it is only the Elite Eight. The pinnacle events of the tournament, being the Final Four and national championship game, haven’t even happened yet. And the stakes are only getting higher.?

It’s my guess that the record Monday night’s matchup set will only last for a couple of days. If this all proves anything, let is be this:?

Everyone watches women’s sports.