National Collegiate Athletic Association

The NCAA News - News and Features

April 14, 1997
Ratings rise for basketball title games

Television ratings for the 1997 Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Championships were up compared to 1996.

The rating for the men's championship game between the University of Arizona and the University of Kentucky was 18.9, which is a three percent increase over the 1996 championship game.

The women's championship game drew a rating of 4.0, which made it the cable network's highest-rated and most-watched women's game ever.

Men's championship

The Division I Men's Basketball Championship remains a highly attractive television event. The Arizona-Kentucky game ranked far ahead of CBS' usual Monday night programming (39 percent better than the season-to-date average), and the network also won the night in key demographic areas.

About 50 million people watched the game, an increase of almost nine percent over 1996. Excluding the National Football League, it was the highest-rated sports broadcast of the year to date.

There is no question that viewership has dipped in recent years. Men's ratings hit a spike from 1989 to 1993 when ratings exceeded 20.0 in four of five years.

However, over-the-air network ratings in general have declined in the time since as competition from cable networks has become increasingly severe and viewership for all sports programming has declined.

The highest-rated NCAA final -- a 24.1 for the 1979 game between Michigan State University and Indiana State University -- occurred 18 years ago in the heyday of network television. A more appropriate comparison for the NCAA championship game would seem to be with the recent past. In that regard, the numbers for the last three years are 19.3, 18.3 and 18.9.

In comparison:

  • The 1996 National Basketball Association finals on NBC averaged only 16.7, which was a 20 percent increase from the previous year. From 1991 to 1995, the average rating for the NBA finals was 14.8. Ratings for the NBA all-star game have fallen by one-third since 1988.

  • The six-game average for last year's World Series between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Yankees was 17.4, lower than any measured World Series except for 1990 and 1993.

  • In 1996, the ABC, NBC and Fox set or tied modern-era lows for viewership of National Football League games. Viewership was down five percent for the broadcast networks, 10 percent for cable.

    "If you look at other major sports events and their ratings, this does better than virtually all of them," Mike Aresco, vice-president of programming for CBS, told The Associated Press. "That's an extremely healthy number at a time when ratings for so many sporting events have dipped."

    Some media reports also cited attendance problems for the 1997 men's tournament, but that concern was based strictly on percentage-of-capacity criteria.

    Indeed, in terms of raw numbers, the 1997 championship was one of the best. The final total was 634,574, which is the fifth-largest figure in the 59-year history of the tournament. Attendance per session was 18,664, also the fifth-highest ever.

    Only first-round games in Memphis drew fewer than 10,000 people. Fifteen of the 34 sessions drew more than 15,000, and nine drew more than 20,000.

    Women's championship

    The championship game was ESPN's fourth most-watched event of the year, trailing only the Outback Bowl (5.3) and two NASCAR races (5.3 and 5.2).

    The game reached an estimated 2.85 million households and was the highest-rated sports program for the week on advertising-supported cable television.

    In addition, it was the most-watched NCAA basketball game (men's or women's) on ESPN or ESPN2 since 1990 and was the third most-watched NCAA basketball game (men's or women's) in ESPN's history.

    The game also tied for the highest-rated NCAA men's or women's basketball game on ESPN or ESPN2 since 1993 (the 1996 Big East men's championship drew a 4.0).

    The rating of 4.0 was greater than the rating for four of the last six years the women's championship game was on CBS.

    As for attendance in the women's tournament, it was down in 1997.

    Attendance for the final was as good as it could be: 16,714-seat Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati was sold out well in advance for both Women's Final Four sessions.

    But the regionals averaged only 4,252, with two regional finals drawing less than 3,000. The result was that the overall attendance of 225,923 was the lowest since 1992. Even so, the per-session average of 5,379 was the fourth-highest in the 16 years of the tournament.

    Men's basketball

  • Ratings for the men's championship game between Arizona and Kentucky were up three percent over the 1996 figure.

  • The championship game was the highest-rated prime-time telecast for CBS since the 1995 title game.

  • From 8-11 p.m. (Eastern time), CBS scored a 14.6/23 rating, which is 39 percent ahead of its Monday season-to-date average.

  • CBS won the night in key adult demographic groups, including men and women ages 18-49 and 25-54.

    Women's basketball

  • The women's championship game between Tennessee and Old Dominion was the third-highest-rated program on ad-supported cable television for the week.

  • The championship game was the highest-rated sports program on ad-supported cable television for the week (the rating for the Major-League Baseball debut on ESPN was 3.3).

  • The 4.0 rating for the title game was ESPN's fourth-highest telecast of the year (behind the Outback Bowl and two NASCAR races).