For the first time in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) history, the Division I Women’s National Championship Game this year had more average viewers than the Division I Men’s National Championship Game, surpassing the men’s games by nearly four million viewers.
The aforementioned women’s championship game had nearly 19 million average viewers, 90 percent more average viewers than last year’s title game, and 289 percent more average viewers than that from two years ago.
According to ESPN’s Rebecca Lobo, much of this success can be attributed to former University of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark.
Clark recently broke the NCAA’s Division I scoring record for both women and men, a record that stood for 50 years. It was previously held by Pete “Pistol” Marovich, a member of the National Basketball Association (NBA) Hall of Fame.
Women’s basketball fan Gabi Traum, a Pali junior, said Clark had a monumental impact on women’s sports.
“I feel like people didn’t realize how amazing these female athletes really are,” Traum said. “When she started breaking not only female basketball records but male basketball records as well… people were like ‘Oh, now she’s not just competing with women.’”
Clark was recently drafted by the Indiana Fever as the No. 1 pick in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft, where she continued to draw historic viewership numbers, more than quadrupling any previous draft, according to USA Today.
Sabrina Ionescu, a current WNBA athlete, is also drawing new fans to the WNBA.
A shootoff between her and NBA all-time three-point leader Stephen Curry over the NBA’s All-Star Weekend averaged 5.4 million viewers, while other events averaged 4.6 million viewers overall.
Sophomore Elly Tierney, a varsity basketball player at Pali, said that the competition was very exciting to watch.
Tierney added that effects of this viewership surge include increased interest in high school women’s sports.
While Ionescu narrowly lost the competition, 29-26, her performance would have landed her a tiebreak round to qualify for the finals of the official NBA three-point contest, albeit with the lighter WNBA ball.
“If you can shoot you can shoot,” Ionescu said of her performance. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl.”
Traum said that this increase in viewership for women’s college basketball could lead to more young girls being interested in the sport.
“I’ve definitely seen an increase in people interested in women’s basketball,” Traum said. “I think that’s super cool.”
