Can women’s college basketball sustain its historic rise in viewership?

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Monday night's March Madness game in which Iowa beat LSU to go to the Final Four was watched by more than 12 million viewers on ESPN, making it the most watched women's college basketball game ever.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That's right, Geoff. In fact, it was the most watched college basketball game ever on the cable channel, men's or women's.

  John Yang joins us now with more — John.

• John Yang:

  Well, Amna and Geoff, that audience was bigger even than last year's record-setting NCAA Championship Game between the same two teams, and that was on ABC, which reaches more homes than ESPN. It was bigger than any Major League Baseball game since the 2022 World Series and bigger than every National Hockey League game since 1971.

  The question is whether it's a one-time effect of superstar Caitlin Clark or whether it's a sign of bigger changes for women's sports.

  Nicole Auerbach is a senior writer for The Athletic. She covers college football and basketball.

  Nicole, so what about that? Is this just a one-time effect of Caitlin Clark or are we seeing a big shift in women's sports?

• Nicole Auerbach, The Athletic:

  Well, I think we're seeing a shift.

  I mean, this is a multiple-years trajectory that we're seeing. And there was also 6.7 million people that watched the second part of that doubleheader on Monday night. And in any other year, that would have been a record for a non-Final Four game for the women's tournament. And, instead, this year, that record has been broken so many times, it wasn't.

  But what I think it does is, it has introduced a lot more people to a lot of the stars in women's basketball. We are seeing them stick around. Even if they came in for Caitlin Clark, they are getting to know the JuJu Watkins and the Paige Bueckers that maybe they forgot about who was injured for the last year-and-a-half.

  And maybe they're deciding that they're getting invested with their local team. But we are seeing it continue to build and spread. So I think that there are a lot of stars in place and interesting teams and parity across the board that will keep people engaged in women's college basketball even after Caitlin Clark heads off to the pros.

• John Yang:

  I mean, compared to the men's tournament, we're learning today that on the secondary market, tickets for the Final Four, for the women's Final Four, are $2,300, which is twice what the going rate is for the men's Final Four.

  What does that tell you?

• Nicole Auerbach:

  Well, it tells you that, first of all, one is in an arena and one is in a football stadium. But it shows the demand for these tickets on the women's side.

  I had said to some folks who were involved in the planning for Cleveland before the tournament began that if you got South Carolina and a UConn or an Iowa or one of the three, you would probably have a pretty good audience. And I think that this is going to be an incredible atmosphere for these teams because of those fan bases that are going to be there.

  But it does show that there is demand.

• John Yang:

  And beyond college basketball, are we seeing this shift in women's professional soccer and in other sports?

  Is it too early to say that we sort of crossed a threshold now?

• Nicole Auerbach:

  I think we have crossed a threshold.

  I mean, I noticed it anecdotally among my friends that they are planning their weekends around these women's games, that they are making sure that they were going to be done with whatever work they had in order to be seated in time for that 7:00 game to watch Iowa-LSU.

  And that's been changing over the last couple of years, because, obviously, we have seen the viewership increases in a lot of different sports, but even in the collegiate space, that includes women's gymnastics, it includes volleyball, it includes softball. So you are seeing the growth in a lot of these areas.

  And then you're seeing media companies respond to that and give better time slots, better channels that they're on to make it more accessible and to ride off of that, because, if it's more accessible, you are going to find new and bigger audiences that are down the road.

  And so I think that we have seen that across the board. And, obviously, I think, with this women's basketball season, and if you have watched one game, you were more likely to stick around and watch more. And I think that's what's really kind of getting people excited about the future.

  Obviously, Caitlin Clark is a unique phenomenon, but if she introduces more people to the sport and they realize, hey, this is really fun, this is high-level athleticism, this is elite athletes, they are more likely to stick around. So I think you're seeing that in a number of spaces.

• John Yang:

  We mentioned the new attention to this, but there's also, we have to mention, some negative attention Angel Reese of LSU. She's gotten a lot of criticism since her team won the national championship last year.

  And she got very emotional talking about it Monday night in the postgame news conference.

• Angel Reese (LSU Basketball Player):

  I have been through so much. I have seen so much. I have been attacked so many times, death threats. I have been sexualized. I have been threatened. I have been so many things,and I have stood strong every single time.

  And I just try to stand strong for my teammates, because I don't want them to see me down and then, like, not be there for them. So I just want them to always just know, like, I'm still human.

• John Yang:

  Nicole, I'm going to ask this very plainly. How much does race play into that?

• Nicole Auerbach:

  Oh, it plays into it quite a bit. I mean, I think a lot of what we have seen over the last year has been two things, right?

  It's that we're talking about a female athlete, and then we're talking about a Black athlete. And Angel has actually talked about this a little bit throughout the whole weekend. I was in Albany when she was opening up about this in the lead-up to that championship game. She said she hasn't had peace since last year's national championship game.

  And it's really hard to imagine anyone being able to put themselves in her shoes and understand how famous she got so quickly. And then you become a polarizing figure who isn't afraid to say how they feel. And that has attracted, again, a lot of criticism and all of the things that Angel said has absolutely happened to her.

  And that's part of this as well. When there are more eyeballs on female athletes, especially Black female athletes, there is an underside to this that is really ugly. And it's something that I think we all need to be aware of, so that we can help make this better for female athletes, especially Black female athletes in college sports, who are really young and exposed in a way that is just hard to imagine.

  But it's not someone who necessarily sought out the level of fame that she has, but has to live with it. And it's — it was incredible to hear her teammates have her back and support her, which led to that emotional response.

• John Yang:

  Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic, thank you very much.

• Nicole Auerbach:

  Thanks for having me.