Popularity of NCAA Women’s Basketball Rises

The NCAA Women’s March Madness championship game of this year was the most-watched basketball game since 2019, with a ground-breaking 24 million views. For the first time in history, its TV ratings surpassed those of the men’s championship game, bringing NCAA Women’s Division 1 basketball to a whole new record-breaking level.

Michael Schuckers, a professor of statistics at St. Lawrence University who specializes in analyzing sports data, noted that there has been a shift in the popularity of women’s collegiate sports recently. “I think we’ve seen a big growth in the attention that women’s sports are getting,” he said. “March Madness is the most recent example, and maybe the biggest example, that is currently going on with women’s sports.”

Schuckers had heard a lot recently about the Women’s March Madness tournament and, more especially, about a few notable star players. “I think a lot of attention was particularly paid to Caitlyn Clark’s pursuit of the scoring record,” he said. “There seems to be this surge in interest in college women’s basketball, at least at the Division 1 level.”

The Assistant Athletic Director for Communications and Marketing at SLU, Michael Nellis, noticed that March Madness marketing this year was focused more on the players themselves and less on the overall teams. “The most prevalent thing that I heard about it across the board was the personalities, the people,” he said.

Nellis believes that this big change in marketing, with news outlets focusing more on the players in women’s March Madness, might have contributed to the sport’s overall popularity and growth. “We are seeing personalities and athletes become the more important part of marketing a sport,” he said. “Now, what this does is it benefits the sport as a whole. It just creates a different kind of environment.”

Caroline Moran ’27, a student-athlete at SLU who has followed this year’s March Madness, believes that the extreme growth in women’s basketball can be attributed to the energy and excitement surrounding this year’s tournament.

“I think what feels different this year is having someone like Angel Reese on the court who, despite be- ing criticized, still shows her emotion,” she said. “I think that the LSU and the Iowa rivalry really made women’s sports stand out.” Many are shocked by the increase in viewer interest in this year’s Women’s March Madness, but Schuckers believes that both men’s and women’s games should be enjoyed. “Men are genetically bigger and stronger, but that doesn’t mean that the women’s game is any less compelling,” said Schuckers. “I think one of the things is that sports are entertaining and can be entertaining at a variety of levels.”

The viewer record wasn’t the only one broken this year in women’s college basketball. The betting record was, too, with the Iowa-LSU game being the most bet on women’s sporting event in history. Schuckers weighs in on this, stating, “Certainly, more money being bet on the sport is a signal of the attention that the sport is getting, 100 percent.” He explains that betting is sort of a byproduct of the general attention that the women’s game is getting.

Connor Meissner, a data analyst for the sports and entertainment analysis company Elevate, believes the impacts of this year’s March Madness will continue to create a revolution for women’s sports. “We’ve witnessed women’s sports as a whole grow over the past few years, but to see the women’s champion- ship game’s TV ratings surpass the men’s final is more than growth; it’s an explosion,” he said. “The fact that viewership for the women’s final has more than tripled in the last few years tells us all we need to know about the positive trajectory of women’s basketball.”

Nellis believes that a lot still needs to happen in order to create greater support for women’s basketball, but the main thing is an investment, meaning money and partnerships. “I think there needs to be investment from businesses and business people in order to further advance the sport in general,” he said. “There are other types of investment that can occur that would further develop the league, like an NBA team could easily decide to sponsor a WNBA team.”

In terms of the future of women’s collegiate sports and, more specifically, women’s basketball, Schuckers wants to see the sport develop even more. “That would be my hope, that the popularity of these sports will continue to grow,” he said. “There are great and amazing athletes, and to see them getting attention is fantastic.”