Baylor Bears MaCio Teague # 31 climbs for a basket against Drew Timme # 2 of the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the National Championship game of the 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament at Lucas Oil Stadium on April 5, 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Andy Lyons | Getty Images
Gonzaga’s chance at history was shattered in the last game of the men’s basketball tournament of the National College Athletic Association in 2021, as the Bulldogs lost their first game of the season to Baylor Bears, and the spectators suffered.
The 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game drew an average of 16.9 million viewers to CBS Sports on Monday, a 14% drop from the 2019 game. The 2020 contest was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Baylor prevented Gonzaga from going undefeated, defeating the Bulldogs 86-70. A win would have capped a perfect season for Gonzaga and would be the first time a men’s program has gone undefeated at the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers.
This year’s game has been the least watched championship broadcast on CBS since the network began broadcasting the games in 1982. It is also the lowest since WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports owned the game in 2018, after CBS and Turner began to change every two years in 2016. The game, between Villanova and the University of Michigan, attracted about 16.5 million viewers.
CBS had about 19 million viewers for the championship game between Virginia and Texas Tech in 2019. This was a decline from the 2017 game it hosted with the University of North Carolina and Gonzaga, which attracted about 22 million of viewers.
For the men’s Final Four matches in 2021, an average of 14.9 million viewers watched Gonzaga-UCLA on Saturday during overtime, and this game reached a maximum of 18.8 million viewers. Baylor’s win over Houston had 8.1 million viewers, down 37% from the competition in the early 2019 semifinals.
Last month, John Bogusz, CBS Network’s executive vice president of sports sales and marketing, acknowledged the decline in NCAA viewers during the pandemic. He noted that the network has set aside additional advertising inventory for marketers if the network does not meet its viewing objectives.
“We’ll wait and see how the games work, but we’ve reserved some inventory to take care of advertisers if necessary,” Bogusz said.
Cardinal Stanford’s Lexie Hull # 12 blocks Aari McDonald’s # 2 shooting of Arizona wildcats at the Alamodome NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament on April 4, 2021 in San Antonio, Texas.
Ben Solomon | NCAA Photos Getty Images
Spectator for the women’s game
Disney-owned ESPN hosted the women’s tournament in San Antonio. On Tuesday, he said that the title game between Arizona and Stanford attracted an average of 4 million viewers on Sunday, reaching 5.9 million. The network declared that it is the most watched women’s contest of 2014.
Stanford defeated the Wildcats 54-53 to win its first 1992 NCAA women’s basketball title.
The network also reported solid numbers around the semifinal games. Stanford’s victory over South Carolina drew an average of 1.6 million viewers, while the loss at the University of Connecticut to Arizona had 2.6 million viewers, up 24% from second competition in the semifinals of 2019.
Disney placed six games of the women’s tournament on its ABC network, marking the first time a broadcast network hosted games from the 1995 women’s tournament, when CBS aired several contests.
The March 27 Iowa vs. Connecticut contest was the highest rated of the games, with 1.5 million viewers, followed by the Michigan-Baylor game with 1.2 million. The network said that the Sweet 16 contests broadcast on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 had an average of 918,000 viewers, which is an increase of 67% compared to 2019.