According to multiple sources, this year’s opening weekend for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball tournament has managed to receive the highest ratings since 1994.
The championship’s household rating went up from 5.1 in 2011 to 5.3 in 2012 across TBS, CBS, TNT and TruTV. That’s a 15% raise over a rating of 4.6 in 2010, according to Nielsen fast nationals.
Over this past weekend, each tourney game averaged 8 million viewers, a number that is up 3% from last year’s 7.8 million viewers at the same time last year. Comparable to 2010, there was an average 7 million viewers per channel at the same time. For Saturday’s games, which was also St. Patrick’s Day, ratings averaged a 6.1, 3% over last year’s 5.9 and 13% above the 5.4 mark in 2010. Also on the same day, there was a 9.3 million viewer average which was an 11% jump from the 8.4 million viewers in 2010.
The NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship is a single-elimination tournament held each spring in the United States, featuring 68 college basketball teams, to determine the national championship in the top tier of college basketball. The tournament, organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and was the brainchild of Ohio State University coach Harold Olsen. Held mostly in March, it is known informally as March Madness or the Big Dance, and has become one of the most prominent annual sporting events in the United States. (Wiki)
CBS and Turner Broadcasting are currently in a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal to show all the tournament games on four of their networks respectively.
