Caitlin Clark and Iowa’s win over LSU was most-watched women’s basketball game ever

Related video above: Caitlin Clark breaks NCAA women’s career scoring record

IOWA (WHO) – Just when you thought there wasn’t another record Caitlin Clark could break, she and her Hawkeye teammates did just that on Monday night.

According to ESPN PR, 12.3 million viewers tuned in for the national championship rematch with the LSU Tigers – making it the most-watched women’s basketball game in television history.

The game also set an in-house record for ESPN, becoming the most-watched college basketball game ever on their platforms.

The winners on the scoreboard: Iowa and UConn, which are heading to the Final Four in Cleveland this weekend. Perhaps the biggest winner: the women’s game, which had the March Madness stage all to itself on Monday night with massive star power delivering two games worthy of the over-the-top billing, and maybe, just maybe, adding a few new fans along the way.

Caitlin Clark makes 2 free throws, becomes all-time NCAA scoring leader

“It’s a perfect opportunity to make the moment a movement,” said former Division I guard Isis Young, now a broadcaster and analyst. “Right now, women’s basketball is a movement … and the movement is really riding on the back of these players that we’re watching.”

And make no mistake: People were watching. Last year’s LSU-Iowa national championship game, on ABC, drew 9.9 million viewers. Monday’s LSU-Iowa rematch, on cable, crushed that number.

According to The Athletic’s Richard Dietsch, before last year’s first matchup between Iowa and LSU, the record for most watched women’s game was a Final Four matchup between Virginia and Stanford in 1992 that drew 8.1 million viewers to CBS.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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