Generally speaking, American sports fans watch the biggest games in the most popular professional sports in much larger numbers than they watch the biggest games in the college versions of those sports.

For example, in the National Football League, the Super Bowl often attracts an average American television audience of more than 100 million viewers. Over the last decade, the AFC and NFC championship games have had average TV audiences in the 41 million-56 million range.

While the three-game College Football Playoff also has become a ratings juggernaut, its audiences don’t come close to those NFL postseason numbers. In recent years, the college semifinal matchups and championship game ended up in the 16 million-26 million range, or less than half the typical modern audience for the NFL’s conference championship games and perhaps one-quarter to one-sixth of the Super Bowl’s average draw.

Similarly, in baseball, whereas the three-game finale at the College World Series may produce an average TV audience of 2 million viewers per game, the average audience for a World Series game at the Major League Baseball level typically is going to be five to 10 times that number. Just last year, for example, the Atlanta Braves’ four games to two series victory over the Houston Astros drew an average TV audience of almost 12 million per game.

Thanks in large part to this year’s North Carolina Tar Heels, who made a stunning run to the NCAA championship game as an eight seed, the sport of basketball is an exception to this general rule again here in 2022.

In fact, the three most-watched basketball games — college or professional — so far in this calendar year are all UNC games, even through the first five games of the NBA Finals.

The UNC-Kansas game attracted an average TV audience of about 17 million viewers, and Carolina’s victories during March Madness over Duke (16.2 million) and Saint Peter’s (13.6 million) still rank second and third on the list almost halfway through 2022.

The first four games of the ongoing NBA championship series between the Golden State Warriors and the Boston Celtics rank fourth through seventh on this basketball list, with average TV audiences in the 11 million-12 million range, but it’s unlikely that Game Six, a potential Game Seven or any hoops event later this year will be enough to take those top spots away from the Tar Heels.

 

Featured image via Todd Melet

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