The audience measurement company Samba TV is reporting that viewing trends for the the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament were generally positive, with viewing for the Final Four up 19% from last year and the Championship, up by 18%.
The Championship game on CBS drew an audience of 11.8 million U.S. households, up 18% year-over-year, making it the most viewed game of the tournament. The second most viewed game was the Houston vs. Duke Final Four game, which drew an audience of 11.3 million U.S. households, according to Samba TV.
Overall viewership of the men’s tournament varied significantly from round to round, starting and ending strong but petering in the middle, Samba TV reported.
Fans were excited at the start of the tournament, with average First Round viewership up 54%, but Second Round viewership was flat, and Sweet Sixteen was down 7%. Elite 8 saw a slight 2% bump compared with 2024 levels.
Of the top 25 DMAs, Houston over-indexed by the highest margin based on viewership of the Championship game (+56%), rallying hard and outpacing Tampa, Florida which only over-indexed by 12%.
Samba TV reported that the women’s tournament dropped in viewership compared with 2024, impacted by Caitlin Clark no longer being a part of the tournament.
However, with 13.2 million U.S. households watching, viewership was still higher than 2022 levels, indicating that the baseline audience has increased. Throughout the tournament, early rounds were slightly more consistent year-over-year, with First Round actually up 3%, Second Round down 29%, and Sweet 16 down 28%. As the tournament progressed fans tuned out more, with Elite 8 down 67%, Final Four down 62%, and the Championship game dropping 56%.
Diverse, hard to reach audiences over-indexed in viewership of the women’s Championship game, with Black households over-indexing by 23%. By comparison, Black households under-indexed by 3% based on viewership of the men’s Championship, indicating that these valuable audiences are fans of women’s basketball in particular, Samba TV reported.
Samba found that that 81% of households that watched the women’s March Madness tournament also watched the men’s tournament, indicating that the airtime of women’s games is a good place to reach fans of both tournaments.
