MaCio Teague #31 of the Baylor Bears goes up for a basket towards Drew Timme #2 of the Gonzaga Bulldogs within the Nationwide Championship sport of
MaCio Teague #31 of the Baylor Bears goes up for a basket towards Drew Timme #2 of the Gonzaga Bulldogs within the Nationwide Championship sport of the 2021 NCAA Males’s Basketball Event at Lucas Oil Stadium on April 05, 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Andy Lyons | Getty Photos
Gonzaga’s likelihood at historical past was crushed within the 2021 Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Affiliation males’s basketball event, because the Bulldogs misplaced their first sport of the season to the Baylor Bears, and viewership suffered.
The 2021 NCAA males’s basketball championship sport attracted a mean of 16.9 million viewers to CBS Sports activities on Monday, a 14% decline from the 2019 sport. The 2020 contest was canceled as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Baylor prevented Gonzaga from going undefeated, beating the Bulldogs, 86-70. A win would’ve capped an ideal season for Gonzaga, and the primary time a males’s program went undefeated for the reason that 1976 Indiana Hoosiers.
This yr’s sport was the least-watched championship ever aired on CBS for the reason that community began broadcasting the video games in 1982. It is also the bottom since WarnerMedia property Turner Sports activities aired the sport in 2018 (CBS and Turner started switching each different yr in 2016). That sport, between Villanova and the College of Michigan, drew roughly 16.5 million viewers.
CBS had about 19 million viewers for the championship sport between Virginia and Texas Tech in 2019. That was a decline from the 2017 sport it hosted that includes the College of North Carolina and Gonzaga, which attracted roughly 22 million.
For the 2021 males’s Last 4 video games, a mean of 14.9 million viewers watched Saturday’s Gonzaga-UCLA extra time buzzer-beater, and that sport peaked at 18.Eight million viewers. Baylor’s win over Houston had 8.1 million viewers, which is down 37 p.c in comparison with the 2019 early semifinal contest.
Final month, John Bogusz, CBS Community government vp of sports activities gross sales and advertising, acknowledged NCAA’s viewership decline in the course of the pandemic. He talked about the community had put aside additional advert stock for entrepreneurs ought to the community fail to fulfill viewership targets.
“We’ll wait and see how the video games carry out, however now we have put aside just a little little bit of stock to maintain our advertisers if want be,” Bogusz stated.
Lexie Hull #12 of the Stanford Cardinal blocks the shot of Aari McDonald #2 of the Arizona Wildcats within the championship sport of the NCAA Womens Basketball Event at Alamodome on April 4, 2021 in San Antonio, Texas.
Ben Solomon | NCAA Images | Getty Photos
Viewership up for ladies’s sport
Disney-owned ESPN hosted the ladies’s event held in San Antonio. On Tuesday, it stated the title sport between Arizona and Stanford attracted a mean of Four million viewers on Sunday, peaking at 5.9 million. The community stated it was the most-watched ladies’s contest since 2014.
Stanford beat the Wildcats, 54-53, to win its first NCAA ladies’s basketball title since 1992.
The community additionally reported stable numbers across the semifinal video games. Stanford’s victory over South Carolina drew a mean of 1.6 million viewers, whereas the College of Connecticut loss to Arizona had 2.6 million viewers, up 24 p.c from the 2019 second semifinal contest. General, the 2 video games mixed to common 2.Eight million viewers
Disney positioned six video games from the ladies’s event on its ABC community, marking the primary time a broadcast community carried video games from the ladies’s event since 1995, when CBS aired some contests.
The Iowa versus Connecticut contest on March 27 was the very best rated of the video games, with 1.5 million viewers adopted by the Michigan Baylor sport (1.2 million). The community stated the Candy 16 contests aired on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 averaged 918,000 viewers, which is up 67 p.c from 2019.