BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) \u2014 UCLA’s 79-51 victory over South Carolina for its first NCAA women’s basketball title on Sunday averaged 9.9 million viewers on ESPN and ABC, making it the third most-viewed women\u2019s championship game since ESPN started televising the tournament in 1996.<\/p>\n
It was the most-watched sports event of the past week according to Nielsen, and a 15% increase from last year’s game between UConn and South Carolina.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s audience peaked at 10.7 million viewers at the conclusion despite the Bruins holding a significant lead in the second half.<\/p>\n
Friday night’s national semifinals averaged 5.2 million on ESPN, the second most-watched since 1996. South Carolina’s win over UConn and UCLA’s victory over Texas ranking as the fourth- and fifth-most watched semifinal games on ESPN.<\/p>\n
This year’s tournament on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 1.3 million viewers, a 5% increase over last year. ABC and ESPN aired 41 of the 58 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) \u2014 UCLA’s 79-51 victory over South Carolina for its first NCAA women’s basketball title on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[92447,23681,59373,202,86083,87665,69359,59370,59371,196,91639,91638,197,87629,87686,942,82,84,83,9915],"class_list":{"0":"post-241180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-march-madness-ucla-south-carolina","9":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","10":"tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","11":"tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","12":"tag-product-30031-ap-california-state-news-no-weather","13":"tag-product-30035-ap-connecticut-state-news-no-weather","14":"tag-product-30103-ap-south-carolina-state-news-no-weather","15":"tag-product-30109-ap-texas-state-news-no-weather","16":"tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","17":"tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","18":"tag-product-31388-premium-entertainment","19":"tag-product-33328-ap-premium-entertainment-other","20":"tag-product-40776-ap-california-sports-only","21":"tag-product-40778-ap-connecticut-sports-only","22":"tag-product-40812-ap-south-carolina-sports-only","23":"tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","24":"tag-san-antonio","25":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","26":"tag-san-antonio-news","27":"tag-south-carolina"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}