CBS may have missed out on the sure-thing ratings bonanza that a Duke national championship appearance always brings, but Monday night’s Florida-Houston title tilt still managed to scare up a six-year audience high.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the Gators’ stunning 65-63 defeat of Kelvin Sampson’s Cougars averaged 18.1 million viewers, making the men’s NCAA championship game the most-watched since 2019, when Virginia’s win over Texas Tech drew 19.6 million viewers.
In making off with its first title since 2007, Florida helped boost CBS’s deliveries 22% compared to last year’s UConn-Purdue telecast on Warner Bros. Discovery’s cable networks. That said, Monday night’s deliveries likely fell well shy of what the Eye Network would have commanded if Duke hadn’t blown its shot at a 12th trip to the championship game; 10 years ago, the Blue Devils were instrumental in serving up 28.3 million viewers with a 68-63 victory over Wisconsin.
Duke hasn’t been back to the final since.
That 2015 championship tilt remains the most-watched college basketball game of the 21st century and ranks 16th on the all-time list. As it happens, Duke’s freakish Final Four loss to Houston was the second-biggest draw of the 2025 tournament, averaging 16.3 million viewers.
Per Nielsen, CBS’s broadcast of the Florida-Houston showdown peaked at the end of the game with 21.1 million viewers. All told, the tourney averaged 10.2 million viewers across CBS and WBD’s TBS/TNT/truTV, up 3% versus the year-ago mark.
As expected, the women’s tournament faced tough comps in the wake of Caitlin Clark’s promotion to the WNBA, as Sunday afternoon’s UConn-South Carolina blowout averaged 8.5 million viewers on ABC. While that’s the third-biggest title audience since Disney snared the rights to the women’s bracket in 1996, Sunday’s turnout was down 55% versus the year-ago Iowa-South Carolina broadcast—the most-eyeballed women’s basketball game in history, with an average draw of 18.9 million viewers—and off 14% from the Iowa-LSU final in 2023 (9.9 million).
When compared to the last time Clark and the Hawkeyes weren’t featured in the title game, viewership for UConn’s 82-59 rout improved 75%. In 2022, the first UConn-South Carolina championship game averaged 4.85 million viewers.
While the men’s game easily out-delivered the women’s broadcast, it’s worth noting that this year’s outing on CBS still didn’t quite hit the highs of the 2024 Iowa-South Carolina broadcast, falling short of the mark by some 800,000 viewers. That said, the turnout for Monday night’s nailbiter down in San Antonio will put the men’s title tilt back among this year’s top 100 broadcasts; if last year’s chart is any indication, Florida’s come-from-behind victory should close out 2025 at or around the No. 85 slot.
