In season in which South Carolina basketball sets attendance records, Gamecocks also set TV record

The baseline for drawing the most interest in a sporting event has always been elite fanbases, elite teams, elite players, and, of course, elite stakes. That's exactly what the ESPN executives got when they wound up with Dawn Staley's South Carolina basketball team beating Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes for the women's college basketball National Championship.

Staley and the Gamecocks were the best team in the sport this season, and Caitlin Clark is one of the greatest ever to play the game. South Carolina basketball fans are, arguably, the best women's basketball fans in the country, and Iowa Hawkeye fans are one of the few fanbases in the discussion with Carolina. Putting the best team, the best player, and the best fans into the game with the highest stakes was exactly what the college basketball world wanted.

All of that, paired with the recent trend of growth in the women's game (especially the women's college game), added up to a ratings explosion in the title game on Sunday. Even though most expected the game to challenge ratings records, not many truly believed in what ended up happening.

Despite playing at 3:00 PM EST on a Sunday afternoon (many West Coast fans were still finishing church or at a Sunday brunch/lunch at that time), the Gamecocks and the Hawkeyes shattered all the recent television viewership records.

Averaging 18.7 Million viewers, the 2023-2024 National Championship Game peaked in eyeballs with over 24.7 Million people watching at its busiest point. The numbers were almost double from last year's matchup between Iowa and LSU and were up by a whopping 285% from the year before when South Carolina and UConn played in the title game.

Richard Deitsch of The Athletic compiled some viewership statistics, and the results are staggering. The title game marked the most watched basketball game (men's or women's, college or pro) in the last five years. The game performed better than all but four college football games this past year, every baseball game since the 2019 World Series, every NBA game since the 2017 NBA Finals, and every Master's round since Tiger Woods completed the Tiger Slam at Augusta in 2001.

Other than football, the Olympics, and the World Cup, no sporting event matched the number of viewers for this game over the last five years.

South Carolina basketball fans already set the all-time total attendance record this season (and finished second all-time in average attendance), so it seems only fitting that the Gamecock FAMs would get to share this piece of history with Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes.