UNC-Duke Final Four Game Draws Massive Viewership Numbers

The initial viewership numbers for TBS’ broadcast of the UNC-Duke Final Four game in New Orleans are starting to trickle in. And unsurprisingly, those numbers are eye-popping.

With an average of 16.3 million viewers, the game is already the most-viewed Final Four game since UNC played Oregon in 2017, and projects to be the second most-viewed college basketball broadcast in the history of cable television once out-of-home viewership numbers are included later.

When combined with the Kansas-Villanova game earlier in the day, the Final Four as a whole averaged 13.5 million viewers, which is up nine percent from 2021. The 2022 NCAA Tournament has seen audience increases across all platforms compared to 2021.

NCAA March Madness Live, the official streaming partner of the tournament, broke records for its coverage of the UNC-Duke game. The stream drew the largest audience and the most minutes consumed for any single game in the history of the app, with as many as 1.4 million concurrent streams. Social engagement during the game shattered the previous record for a Final Four game by 36 percent, continuing a tournament-long trend of elevated social engagement.

Carolina and Kansas will play in the national championship game, also on TBS, Monday night at 9:20 p.m. in New Orleans.

Featured image via Todd Melet

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