It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year since the women’s NCAA Tournament national championship game eclipsed the men’s national championship game for the first time in viewership, ticket sales and hype. With the 2025 women’s tournament officially starting Friday, what have we learned about the world of women’s college basketball since Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and her LSU rival, Angel Reese, left for the WNBA?
Simply put, the idea that women’s college basketball couldn’t reach high levels of success without Clark was false.
The idea that women’s college basketball couldn’t reach high levels of success without Clark was false.
To be clear, there’s a lot of doubt among television executives regarding whether this year’s women’s national championship game will reach the 19 million viewers that last year’s showdown between Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes and Kamilla Cardoso’s South Carolina Gamecocks got. It’s worth examining how the sport has done on major television networks following the departures of Clark, Reese and many of the other college players who transitioned to the pros.
For years, a catch-22 of women’s basketball has been the complaint from major networks like Fox, ABC and CBS that women’s sports doesn’t have a large enough fan base and the counter from fans that the fan base won’t grow if games aren’t televised. For so long, networks generally declined to show women’s college basketball on the most accessible television networks.
However, as a result of the success last season, Fox, CBS and the Disney family of networks (ABC and ESPN) all broadcast more this women’s college basketball season. Fox broadcast 18 games during the 2024-25 season, including five games in prime-time Saturday night slots.
“There are great stars, great brands. We’ve done more than we have done before, and we’re not alone in doing that,” Fox Sports’ president of insights and analytics, Mike Mulvihill, said.
CBS broadcast this season’s Big Ten Tournament final for the second straight year. It included the third matchup of the season between Los Angeles rivals UCLA and USC, who have two superstar talents of their own. The Clark-vs.-Reese rivalry was only the beginning. I’ll come back to this.
Fox, CBS and the Disney family of networks (ABC and ESPN) all broadcast more this women’s college basketball season.
The Big Ten championship game drew 1.44 million viewers, and UConn vs. USC averaged 2.2 million viewers on a Fox Saturday night prime-time matchup. While there was a dip when it came to how Clark’s games did on these same networks a year before, these non-Clark games still got viewerships in the millions. That’s not nothing, and the numbers prove that viewers are drawn to other stars, too.
And then there are ABC and ESPN. Their regular-season ratings were up 3% over last year and up 41% from the 2022-23 season. This was the most-watched women’s college basketball regular season since the season Tina Charles and Maya Moore led UConn to the national championship in 2009. There was a 120% year-over-year viewership increase in the three games televised on ABC, which averaged 1.3 million viewers a game.
Viewership of around 1 million people across multiple networks disproves the prediction that the women’s college game wouldn’t stay afloat after Clark and Reese left. Another sign the game is doing just fine: The average price for a 30-second commercial during this year’s women’s national championship game has more than doubled.
A big reason an equal number of people, if not more, have watched women’s college basketball the season after Clark, Reese and Cardoso left is the wide array of talent teams have put on the court all season. According to ESPN Bet, there are six teams with better than 10-to-1 odds to win the national championship. Parity has been the name of the game this season.
Each of those six teams has at least one generational talent who’s bound to have a successful WNBA career. Let’s begin with USC’s JuJu Watkins, a 6-2 two-way small forward who is a prolific scorer and gifted athlete. Watkins has played the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed, UCLA, and point center Lauren Betts three times and beaten them twice.
But both L.A. schools are on the same side of the bracket as UConn, which has Paige Bueckers, the 2021 National Player of the Year, who is playing in her final NCAA Tournament. With shooting guard Azzi Fudd and big wing Sarah Strong, Bueckers has more talent around her than she’s had in her entire UConn career.
Reese, Napheesa Collier, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Chelsea Gray made sure Unrivaled was a year-one success.
We can’t forget about Notre Dame, which has a three-headed monster in its backcourt: flashy pass-first guard Olivia Miles, defense-minded slashing guard Hannah Hidalgo and do-it-all wing Sonia Citron. But to win the championship, the Fighting Irish will have to get through Texas, led by three-level scoring point forward Madison Booker, and the defending champions, the South Carolina Gamecocks, who are arguably the deepest team in the field.
The Gamecocks don’t have a true No. 1 option, but March Madness is when superstars are born. Does speedy and shifty guard MiLaysia Fulwiley emerge as South Carolina’s unstoppable force? We’ll have to see.
People don’t have to know that Clark is playing to watch women play basketball. The new 3-on-3 professional league Unrivaled aggressively pursued her to play in its inaugural season. She decided against it. Still, 364,000 viewers (the second most who’d ever watched an Unrivaled game), watched the first-ever championship game. Other WNBA stars, including Reese, Napheesa Collier, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Chelsea Gray made sure Unrivaled was a year-one success.
In the same way, Watkins, Bueckers, Hidalgo, Miles, Booker and Fulwiley will keep March Madness humming following the departure of Clark. The women’s basketball boom was never about one player, and now we have the numbers that prove it.