If you are reading this, you likely know who Paige Bueckers is. Maybe you are also familiar with Lauren Betts, Maddie Booker and MiLaysia Fulwiley.
But Meg Aronowitz, a senior vice president of production for ESPN and the company’s point person for its women’s basketball coverage, cannot afford to make a similar supposition. When the women’s Final Four games air on Friday (7 p.m. ET and 9:30 p.m. ET), she and her ESPN colleagues have to cater, at least in part, to the casual viewer who might watch only one or two women’s basketball games each year.
“This is the part of the tournament where we have to absolutely remind ourselves that this is an entirely new audience joining us,” Aronowitz said. “I know that that sounds very TV cliche, but we have to teach them who these stars are. I tell my people — repeat your best stuff. New viewers are tuning in every round, and we have to make sure that we are giving people a reason to come back on Sunday for the title game.”
We have reached the most interesting part of this tournament as far as a media-centric examination. Why? Because of last year’s outlier viewership. ESPN executives know that it will be impossible to duplicate the Final Four viewership numbers from a year ago — and that is a direct result of Caitlin Clark not being in this tournament. Iowa’s win over UConn in the national semifinals set a then-new record for the most-watched women’s college basketball game in history with an average of 14.2 million viewers. It was ultimately topped by the 18.9 million viewers who watched the title game between Iowa and South Carolina. Yes, there are plenty of popular players in women’s basketball but only one viewership unicorn — that kid from Iowa with unlimited range.
But this year’s numbers present data points that speak to the growth of women’s college basketball writ large. The Elite Eight games averaged 2.9 million viewers, the second most-watched Elite Eight round on record, only behind the Clark-infused (6.2 million viewers) numbers from last year. Elite Eight games in 2025 were up 34 percent from 2023. ESPN said four of the top 10 Elite Eight games on record aired this year, including:
• LSU-UCLA (3.4 million viewers, No. 3 Elite Eight game all-time)
• Duke-SC (3.1 million, No. 4)
• UConn-USC (3.0 million, No. 6)
• TCU-Texas (2.3 million, No. 9)
The Sweet 16 round averaged 1.7 million viewers across ESPN’s networks, the second-most-watched Sweet 16 on record behind last year (which averaged 2.4 million viewers) and up 39 percent from 2023. This year delivered four of the top 10 Sweet 16 games of all time, including 2.9 million for Tennessee-Texas (No. 3) and 2.5 million for Notre Dame-TCU (No. 4).
The second round of the women’s tournament averaged 982,000 viewers, the second-most-watched second round on record behind the 1.4 million viewer average last year. It was up 60 percent from 2023.
The first round of the women’s tournament averaged 367,000 viewers. That’s down 22 percent from 471,000 last year (as expected without Clark) but up 43 percent from 2023.
Heading into the Final Four, all games have averaged 967,000 viewers, up 47 percent from 2023.
“People came to the women’s Final Four last year because they wanted to see what Caitlin Clark would do,” Aronowitz said. “But it wasn’t just the Iowa games that were rating. The entire tournament rated for us, and it is our job to make sure that we continue to tell the stories of the teams and these student-athletes and give people a reason to stick around.”
ESPN will focus a ton this weekend on Bueckers because stars draw people in. The UConn star had 40 points in the Sweet 16 win over Oklahoma and 31 points against USC on Monday. She is averaging 29 points per game in the tournament.
We’ll never know, given the devastating ACL injury to USC star JuJu Watkins, but you can imagine that the Elite Eight game featuring a healthy Watkins and Bueckers might have become the most-watched Elite Eight game in history.
“Everybody’s talking about Paige,” said Aronowitz. “It’s not ‘Paige Bueckers.’ It’s just ‘Paige.’ When you get to that point where you are first name only, that’s when you know, wow, people are starting to pay attention. The story that comes along with her, all of the injuries, the playing through COVID and the resilience of this young woman, that’s a story that will get people to want to watch. So we are thrilled to have Paige in Tampa.”
(For fans of Watkins, Aronowitz said that ESPN’s women’s basketball group is going to make it a focus to document her return. Said Aronowitz: “We are going to document her journey to recovery, and we can’t wait till there’s a time where she’s got a spring in her step and she’s back out on the court and we get to be able to talk about her success and recovery.”)
As ESPN has seen more success with the women’s Final Four, the investment in technology increases. Aronowitz said this year’s Final Four will be in high dynamic range (HDR), a first for the women’s game. The production has 45 cameras in total, including more super slow-mo and high-frame-rate cameras than ever before.
These are all signs of growth. The interesting number for me will be how the Final Four and title game tracks not against 2023 but the 2022 title game, which we can call the “PTC Era” (Prior To Caitlin). That title game — a 64-49 South Carolina win over Bueckers and UConn — averaged 4.85 million viewers. At the time, it was the most-watched women’s title game since 2004, and the fourth-largest audience to watch a women’s championship game since 1996. The UConn-Stanford national semifinal in 2022 drew 3.23 million viewers, which was the most-watched women’s semifinal game in the PTC era since 2012.
These are the numbers to beat — and I think this Final Four and championship game will do it comfortably.
(Photo: Alika Jenner / Getty Images)
