Make It Easier To Watch Women’s Basketball, And People Do

The 2022 NCAA women’s basketball tournament is providing the latest in an endless series of lessons: that putting women’s sports on television, and boosting the ancillary coverage around it, leads to large audiences tuning in.

This is clear in the latest numbers out of Bristol — that two million fans watched Connecticut’s double-overtime thriller, defeating NC State to reach the program’s 14th straight Final Four.

But as the tweet above makes clear, this isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s happening thanks to implementing a series of long-overdue best practices, from the ability of the women’s tournament to utilize March Madness branding to some smaller but key decisions in the presentation itself.

The decision by the NCAA and ESPN to move March Madness’ women’s bracket unveil to Sunday night gave the women’s tournament a significant lead-in audience from the men’s bracket. What followed was no surprise, either, with a ready audience of people looking to fill out two brackets, not just one.

And 2022 marked a number of milestones, including tournament games on ABC, the first time we saw broadcast television of games since 1995.

None of this is rocket science. Put the games where more people can see them, and tell them about it. The latter was boosted by ESPN’s recent acquisition of Alexa Philippou, giving the network another full-time storyteller dedicated to the women’s game.

Philippou and the rest of the ESPN talent will be on hand in Minneapolis for the weekend’s Final Four festivities in Minneapolis. It will be fascinating to see how things like the alternate broadcasts, featuring Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, boost the audience for things like the final game. Last year’s national final between Arizona and Stanford drew 4.1 million eyeballs, the highest total since 2014, so further activation is only likely to elevate it further.

And if you doubt what making it easier and habit-forming to watch women’s basketball will mean over time for the audience, look no further than the two highest-rated local markets watching last year’s final: Hartford/New Haven and Knoxville, not Tucson and Palo Alto.

The fans and media in both Tennessee and UConn coverage are used to this kind of coverage in March. Increasingly, we’re getting to see what the rest of the country looks like when it gets that kind of treatment, too.