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March Madness 2024: Are ratings up or down for this year’s NCAA Tournament?

We breakdown ratings of the early rounds of this year’s NCAA Tournament.

By Grace McDermott
Texas v Tennessee Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
Grace McDermott is a Staff Writer at DKN who specializes in college football, college basketball and golf. Before joining Vox in the summer of 2022, she spent time at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Deadspin. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a lifelong Fighting Irish fan.

The first two rounds of March Madness 2024 have come to a close. The best four days of sports have narrowed down the NCAA Tournament field to just 16 teams, and there was relatively little drama on the path to the Sweet 16 this season. Just one double-digit seed, No. 11 NC State, reached the second week of the tournament, and they won a Power 5 conference tournament, which may disqualify the Wolfpack from full “Cinderella” status.

Of course, we saw some excitement as No. 14 Oakland took down No. 3 Kentucky, and as No. 8 Texas A&M came back to tie No. 1 Houston and send the game to overtime, but many of the close games went the way of the higher seed this week. The Oakland upset over the Wildcats was the most-viewed single game of the first two rounds, pulling in 6.2 million viewers on CBS, and was the most-viewed first round game since 2019.

There was plenty of controversy around the selection of the 68 participating teams this year, as well. Indiana State was left out, becoming the team with the highest-ever NET ranking to be excluded from the tournament, and the Big East was largely snubbed — a move that looks much worse now that all three Big East teams included have reached the Sweet 16, while the SEC sent just two teams to the second weekend after receiving eight bids.

But does any of this mean that the American public isn’t watching? Per the NCAA, first round games drew in an average of 8.53 million viewers per window, the third-most in tournament history (behind 2023 and 2015). Thursday was the most-watched first tournament day since 2015.

The ratings increased over the weekend in the Round of 32, as Saturday drew in 10.8 million viewers per window, making it the highest-watched Saturday ever. Sunday’s numbers are not yet available, but based on the available ratings information, the NCAA Tournament is doing just fine.

However, the regular season is another story — for the first time in history, the men’s regular season viewership fell behind the women’s regular season viewership at Fox Sports this year. Last year’s women’s NCAA final was the most-viewed women’s game in NCAA history, and we can expect this year’s Final Four and Championship rounds to break that record again as interest continues to grow.

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