Women's basketball finale crushes St. Louis sports teams in local television viewership (2024)

It was the Caitlin crush.

The national fervor for women’s college basketball this season, ignited by enormous interest in Iowa standout Caitlin Clark, culminated with a massive television audience Sunday for her team’s loss to South Carolina in the national title contest.

The game, shown over the air on ABC and on cable’s ESPN, was seen in 18.9 million homes. That’s a record for a women’s basketball contest and the largest audience for a basketball game of either gender, college or professional, since 2019. It was the third time in seven days Clark’s Hawkeyes had broken the women’s viewership record, and the finale outdrew Monday’s men’s championship game that garnered 14.8 million across cable’s TBS, TNT and TrueTV outlets.

Iowa’s ratings knockouts hit the St. Louis market, too.

The championship game, locally on KDNL (Channel 30) and ESPN, was seen in 9.3% of the market and in about 119,200 homes according to viewership-tracking company Nielsen. The Hawkeyes’ semifinal victory on Friday, on ESPN, pulled a 7.3 local rating and 95,700 households. St. Louis ranked 18th nationally for both games.

Those Iowa games far outpaced what the local teams drew on TV over the weekend. The best Cardinals figures were on Saturday, when Bally Sports Midwest generated a 5.1 rating and 65,500 homes for a game against Miami. The best figures for the Blues, also on BSM, were on Sunday for their contest against Anaheim — 2.2 rating, 27,500 households.

The Battlehawks pulled a 2.7 rating and 34,200 households for their United Football League home opener Saturday night against Arlington on KDNL. Viewership figures last weekend for the other major local team, City SC, are unavailable because its match was exclusively streamed on Apple TV+, which refuses to announce audience sizes for its Major League Soccer coverage.

Clark next is headed to the WNBA, and CBS announced this week that it will televise eight of that league’s regular-season games on its broadcast network (KMOV, Channel 4 locally), the most it ever has shown. In addition, 12 more will appear on cable’s CBS Sports Network. WNBA contests also are to be shown this season, which begins May 14, on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, Ion, NBA TV as well as multiple streaming platforms including Prime Video.

Indiana is expected to take Clark with the first pick in this year’s WNBA draft, and in anticipation, 36 of the Fever’s 40 regular-season games are set to be televised nationally.

Head to head

City SC on Sunday will make the first of its three appearances this season on an over-the-air network as its game against Austin will be shown on Fox (KTVI, Channel 2 locally). It will be a rare time that viewership figures will be available, though only partially. The game, at 3:45 p.m., also will be streamed on Apple TV+ outside of its paywall, but no audience size is expected to be announced for that coverage.

KTVI also plans a local postgame show from 6 to 7 p.m. City SC coach Bradley Carnell is scheduled to appear, and features on players Tim Parker and Tomas Totland are planned. Sports director Martin Kilcoyne reports from CityPark with colleague Kevin Ryans. Daniel Esteve anchors in the studio with commentary from Ty Keough.

That match will be part of an extremely busy afternoon of St. Louis sports on TV, which will have three games on simultaneously after the Blues entertain Seattle at noon on TNT and Max. Then the Battlehawks are in San Antonio for a 2 p.m. kickoff on KDNL, followed by the Cardinals in Arizona at 3:10 p.m., both overlapping City SC.