Best Women’s College Basketball Rating in a Decade for UConn-Notre Dame

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Best Women’s College Basketball Rating in a Decade for UConn-Notre Dame

Photo of Rachel Margolis Siegal Rachel Margolis Siegal Follow on Twitter April 9, 2014

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Rating up 40% from 2013; Fourth Largest Audience for the Event in 19 Years on ESPN
Most-Viewed Women’s Event on WatchESPN and Largest Audience for ESPN3 Surround Production

Tuesday night’s victory by the University of Connecticut over University of Notre Dame in the NCAA Women’s National Championship earned a 2.8 US rating, the highest for any ESPN women’s college basketball game in a decade.  The rating for the unprecedented title game battle of unbeatens – a 79-58 victory for UConn’s record ninth national championship – is the highest for the sport since Connecticut’s victory over Tennessee for the 2004 title earned a 3.5.

The highly anticipated matchup averaged 3.21 million households and 4.27 viewers (P2+) – fourth and sixth best, respectively, since ESPN began televising the women’s championship in 1996.  In addition, the 2.8 rating represents an increase of 40 percent over a 2.0 a year ago for UConn over Louisville.

In addition, nearly 100,000 fans turned to WatchESPN for the traditional telecast and the special ESPN3 Surround production of the matchup.  Those 100,000 thousand fans generated 3,800,000 minutes on the game, both all-time highs for a women’s college basketball game.  Additionally, the game generated the most minutes viewed for an ESPN3 Surround production to date.

Among the metered markets, Hartford/New Haven led the way with a 29.3 rating, making it the market’s highest overnight for a program on cable in 2014. Nashville was the second highest-rated market with a 6.8 followed by Knoxville (6.0), Louisville (5.5), Indianapolis (4.8), Raleigh-Durham (4.7), Providence (4.6), New York (4.6), Memphis (4.5) and Greenville (4.5).

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Photo of Rachel Margolis Siegal Rachel Margolis Siegal Follow on Twitter April 9, 2014
Photo of Rachel Margolis Siegal

Rachel Margolis Siegal

A part of the Internal Communications team at ESPN, I began with the network in 2010 as part of the College Sports PR team. Always an avid sports fan and not an athlete – I grew up a huge fan of the Hartford Whalers, while also watching my brother compete at different levels. I became the manager of several high school sports teams and continued that hobby into college. While at Quinnipiac, I worked in the Sports Information Department, which led me to a summer internship at the New Haven Ravens, a AA baseball team, and an eventual job with the Athletic Communications Department at the University of Connecticut. After my five-year stint at Connecticut, I spent six years as Director of Communications at the BIG EAST Conference in Providence, R.I. before joining ESPN.
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