NCAA Women’s College World Series Sets Viewership Records

First of all, we'd like to send a huge congratulations to the Oklahoma Sooners for winning the 2021 NCAA Women's College World Series! They battled back from an opening game loss at the tournament, and went on to achieve a record-breaking, championship end to their season. They now hold the records for most home runs in a season (161) and in the WCWS (15), and are the 3rd most winningest program in NCAA history with 5 national titles. Sooners' utility player, Jocelyn Alo, was also named the USA Softball Player of the Year - hitting 34 home runs and setting the school's record.

WCWS Finals Shatter Streaming Records

ESPN ran an expanded coverage of the entire tournament, recording a total live audience (TV + streaming) average of 984,000 viewers across the 14 games - up 21% from last year’s event. The finals boasted an average of 1,720,000 viewers, making it the most-watched Women’s College World Series Finals in history.

Of course, an action packed WCWS is going to bring the big crowds; but prior to the tournament, ESPN televised every game of the Super Regionals (21 games) from May 26-28. This averaged 477,000 viewers for just TV audience, and was up 34% from last year’s entire presentation (19 games).  To begin the NCAA Division I Softball Championship, ESPN produced the entire regional round – 99 games from all 16 sites for the first time ever. The television games in that round averaged 301,000 viewers a game. These are massive numbers for pre-tournament coverage.

Our Take

ESPN has covered the Women’s College World Series in its entirety for 18 straight years. We do commend them for televising all games and not picking and choosing which will make the broadcast. However, the finals had an average 1,720,000 viewers and was up 33% from last year, but still wasn't hosted in a primetime spot! In comparison (for the readers that still think all men's sports are inherently better), the first round of the 2021 NHL Playoffs on NBC networks and digital, only averaged viewership of 642,000.

There have been great strides in increasing the coverage of women's sports in professional and collegiate levels this year, but it's time for the networks to wake up and look at the stats. The networks have been presented with an invaluable opportunity for the integration of women's sports in their broadcasting, and to not capitalize would be an injustice on the road to equality in sports.

~WPS