Duke-Wisconsin draws a whopping 28.3 million viewers

Published Apr. 8, 2015 9:53 a.m. ET

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By Ken Fang

The final numbers are in for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship Game and they are good. Duke-Wisconsin drew the best numbers for the championship since 1997’s Arizona-Kentucky game.

CBS/Turner says last night’s National Championship game drew an average of 28.3 million viewers which is the highest average viewership in 18 years. Arizona-Kentucky averaged 28.4 million viewers. And in this day and age, 28.3 million is close to NFL Wild Card Weekend numbers.

The final rating was 16.0/26 which is 28% better than last year’s UConn-Kentucky championship which garnered a 12.5/20. Viewership for last night was 33% higher than in 2014.

For the tournament, CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV averaged a 7.0/15 for all 67 games and that’s 8% better than last year. Viewership averaged 11.3 million viewers and that’s also 8% higher than 2014’s tournament. This is the highest average viewership since 1993 when it averaged 12.7 million.

Overall, CBS and Turner have to feel very good coming out of this year’s action. The games were good. Viewership was higher than last year and with TBS and truTV setting college basketball and network records this year, it has to be confident that next year will result in similar numbers. TBS set record cable college basketball viewership marks for Kentucky-Notre Dame and Kentucky-Wisconsin. truTV had a network record for Oregon-Wisconsin in the first week of the tournament.

CBS/Turner notes the consumption online also set a record:

So as we put a big red bow on the tournament, our takeaway is that people flocked to the games both online and on TV.

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