Overview
- The men’s NCAA Tournament averaged 10.1 million viewers through the first two rounds, the highest on record, with a 19.7 million spike in Sunday’s early prime time window, according to Nielsen data shared by CBS and TNT Sports.
- Viewership hit new marks at every stage, including a 9.5 million average for the full first round and 11.0 million for the Round of 32, both up from last year and the latter the best since 1993.
- The NCAA set Sweet 16 tip times for Thursday and Friday on CBS, TBS and truTV, and late Eastern starts such as 9:45 p.m. and 10:05 p.m. drew sharp complaints from fans on social media about finishing games on work nights.
- Most top seeds advanced, with three No. 1s still alive (Michigan, Duke, Arizona), Iowa ousting No. 1 Florida as the weekend’s biggest upset, and Texas the highest remaining underdog as a No. 11 seed; the Big Ten placed six teams in the Sweet 16.
- Four schools with men’s and women’s teams in the Sweet 16 — Duke, UConn, Michigan and Texas — have already secured roughly $4.5 million each in NCAA tournament unit payouts for their conferences under the current distribution model.