Iowa’s triumph over LSU in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Elite Eight garnered unprecedented viewership, with an average of 12.3 million viewers and a peak of 16 million viewers. This shattered the previous record set by LSU’s win over Iowa in last year’s championship, which averaged 9.9 million viewers and peaked at 12.6 million.
In Monday’s other Elite Eight matchup, UConn’s victory over USC drew 6.7 million viewers, approaching record-breaking levels for title game viewership. The viewership for UConn-USC peaked at 10.4 million viewers.
According to The Atheltic, these figures mark a significant milestone in women’s basketball viewership. Before last year, the previous record for an NCAA women’s basketball title game in the ESPN era (since 1996) was 5.68 million viewers for UConn’s title win over Oklahoma in 2002. Additionally, the record for any women’s basketball game before last year’s championship was 8.1 million viewers for a Virginia-Stanford national semifinal on CBS in 1992.
Caitlin Clark got her get back. In the Elite 8, Clark and her Iowa Hawkeyes basketball team got the rematch of last year’s national championship matchup with Angel Reese and the LSU Tigers.
This time, the Hawkeyes were on the winning end, advancing to the Final Four 94-87. Clark had a dazzling performance of 41 points, 12 assists, and seven rebounds, including long bombs from three-point range to create distance in the third quarter.
On the other hand, Angel Reese scored 17 points and 20 rebounds, which could be her last performance in an LSU jersey.
Following recent updates, we became curious about how gaming impacts the popularity of athletes. The analytical team at Renomowanekasyno delved into the Instagram of the remarkable Angel Reese. As of today, she has 2,781,293 followers, a significant increase from 2,750,217 on 03/03/24, marking a growth of 30,000 followers in just a month, an impressive statistic. We didn’t stop there; we calculated potential earnings from Angel’s sponsored Instagram posts, revealing she could make between $5,907 and $8,861 per post.
In the other Elite 8 matchup of the night, Paige Buckers and UCONN were too much for JuJu Watkins and the resurgent USC basketball program.
Bueckers reminded the NCAA basketball world who she is after missing the 2023 tournament. She scored 28 points, 10 rebounds, and six assists on her way to an 80- 73-point victory.
Bueckers, named the national player of the year in 2021 and recognized as the standout player in this regional, has now achieved the highest number of 25-point, 10-rebound, 5-assist games in a single NCAA tournament over the past 25 years, totaling three. This surpasses the previous record held by Candice Wiggins from 2008.
Watkins dropped 29 points and ten rebounds in the game, cutting her season short of the Final Four.
We will now have a clash of Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark on Friday.
The post SOURCE SPORTS: Iowa-LSU Rematch Sets Ratings Record for Women’s College Basketball first appeared on The Source.
The post SOURCE SPORTS: Iowa-LSU Rematch Sets Ratings Record for Women’s College Basketball appeared first on The Source.
