Women’s March Madness viewership broke records in a win for advertisers

March Madness has once again come to an end—but before we bid basketball adieu and transition to baseball szn, let’s take a look back at how all the major players showed up at the women’s tournament.

Oh, no. We don’t mean the athletes. We mean the advertisers.

The (ad) roster: Ad inventory for the men’s games was all but sold out by March 8, and in-game sponsorships for the women’s championship were also sold out less than a week later, with 15 broadcast sponsors and almost 100 advertisers onboard, ESPN said. Some of the brands investing in the women’s tournament included:

• Capital One, which was the co-presenting sponsor of the Women’s Tournament Challenge and the presenting sponsor of the women’s championship, the Selection Special, and the Final Four pregame shows.
• CarMax, Indeed.com, Unilever, and Werner Ladder, which all returned to the broadcast with ads on the linear telecast.
• Xfinity, which ran addressable campaigns across live digital shows covering the women’s games.
• AT&T, Intuit QuickBooks, and the US Army, which showed up on social.
• Wendy’s, which created addressable and social campaigns; Buick, which advertised on linear and social; and Nissan, which did all three.

Viewership Ws: Brands that went in on the women’s games were rewarded by this year’s record-breaking viewership throughout the tournament.

• Viewership of the women’s Elite Eight was up 43% from last year to 2.2 million average viewers, with Louisville vs. Iowa becoming the most-viewed Elite Eight game on record for ESPN.
• In the Final Four, the Iowa vs. South Carolina game drew 5.5 million viewers on ESPN platforms, up 72%, while LSU vs. Virginia Tech saw 3.4 million viewers, up 57%. They were the two most-viewed college basketball games (including both men’s and women’s) ever on ESPN+.
• LSU’s win over Iowa in the final match-up averaged 9.9 million viewers, smashing the previous 5.7 million-viewer record for the NCAA women’s tournament set in 2002. It was the most-viewed men’s or women’s college game ever on ESPN+.

Can’t look away: The hand-gesture dramasurrounding Iowa star Caitlin Clark and LSU stand-out Angel Reese likely didn’t hurt audience and advertiser interest in the game, Sebastian Tomich, CCO of The Athletic, told Marketing Brew.

“In terms of women’s sports media, you need some drama,” Tomich said, adding that it “definitely” holds weight with advertisers and audiences alike. The most popular stories on The Athletic usually have some element of drama, typically related to roster construction, trade demands, and contract disputes—storylines that are often absent in women’s sports, he said.

“You need the storylines that go beyond the game,” Tomich told us. “I think as the businesses around the sport start to mature, you'll get more of that, and in turn fans will get more interested. It’s a virtuous cycle.”