National Championship Delivers Second Largest College Basketball Audience in Cable Television History
Telecast Airing Across TBS, TNT & truTV Delivers Top Program of the Night
Title Game Telecast Peaks with 22.3 Million Total Viewers for Villanova’s Buzzer Beating Victory
Turner Sports and CBS Sports’ exclusive coverage of last night’s NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship – Villanova defeating North Carolina at the final buzzer, 77-74 – airing across TBS, TNT and truTV averaged 17.8 million total viewers and a 13.2 HH coverage rating/10.6 U.S. HH rating to deliver the second most-viewed college basketball telecast in the history of cable television. Last night’s National Championship telecast was also the highest-rated and most-viewed program of the night across all of television.
Villanova’s victory over North Carolina peaked with an average of 22.3 million total viewers and a 16.5 HH coverage rating/13.2 U.S. HH rating from 11:15-11:30 p.m. ET, during the final moments of the game. Based on quarter-hour delivery, the audience grew 51% from the start of the game leading up to its epic conclusion.
This year’s National Championship trails only the 2015 National Semifinal game between Wisconsin/Kentucky (also airing across TBS, TNT and truTV) – when the Badgers ended the Wildcats’ quest for an undefeated season – as the all-time, most-viewed college basketball game in cable television history.
Turner networks have now been home to cable television’s top 14 most-viewed college basketball games of all time.
Collectively, the National Championship grossed 2.5 billion minutes of consumption across television and digital platforms. NCAA March Madness Live netted 3.4 million live video streams and 1.1 million live hours of video consumption, the latter a 16% increase over last year.
Monday’s National Championship also generated 56 million impressions across March Madness social accounts on Twitter and Facebook, up 112% over last year. Social video views were up more than five times the volume of last year’s championship game with eight million views overall.
Source: Nielsen Media Research, Arianna, Live +SD data stream. 3/15/16 – 4/4/16 vs. 3/17/15 – 4/5/15. 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011 averages based on weighted average of 4 telecast gross across TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV. Historical audiences, CBS 1991 through 2005 based on Live data. Conviva, Adobe Analytics for digital metrics. Facebook Insights and Twitter for social analytics.
