The NCAA women’s basketball title game will air on ABC for the first time this season.
The championship game, which normally airs at prime time, will take place on April 2nd at 3:00 PM ET. This year’s Women’s Final Four will be held in Dallas.
“Scheduling the Division I Women’s Basketball Championship on ABC is an ongoing effort to work with the NCAA to maximize the exposure of women’s sports,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN’s president of programming and original content. “The Women’s NCAA Championship continues to generate strong viewership across the ABC/ESPN network, and this move provides a unique showcase for student-athletes competing for this marquee event and national championship.” It represents an opportunity.”
ESPN said it would consider hosting the 2023 and 2024 championship games on ABC and returning the games to prime time in the future, but has now pledged to have an entertainment show on game night. Yes. Back in the 1980s, when women’s tournaments first began, the Final Four and championship matches were televised on CBS in the afternoon. ESPN took over his entire tournament in 1996, and the title game has been televised in the evening ever since.
Last season’s championship game, in which South Carolina defeated UConn, was the most-watched women’s title game in nearly two decades, attracting 4.85 million viewers. Average national semifinal viewership was 2.7 million, up 21% year-on-year, making her the most-watched semifinal of the decade. The average viewership for the entire tournament was 634,000, an increase of 16% from the previous year’s coverage.
ESPN has the rights to broadcast the women’s tournament through 2024 as part of the NCAA championship package. The network has aired the NCAA Women’s Tournament games on ABC for the past two seasons, but not the title game.
NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Commission Chair and Athletic Director Beth Getz said: ball state. “We are grateful to ABC/ESPN for their partnership in the continued growth of the game and the championship.”
The NCAA Tournament expanded to 68 games last season, and this season will feature regional competitions at two sites, with eight teams playing in Greenville, South Carolina and the remaining eight in Seattle. The tournament will follow this format until 2027.
The Division II and Division III championship games will also take place in Dallas on the same weekend as the Division I Final Four. It will be the first time since 2016 that three championships will be held in the same city.
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