ESPN announced the 2025-26 women’s college basketball season made impressive history this weekend.
The 2025-26 women’s college basketball regular season wrapped up last week. Major conference tournaments are underway and the 68-team NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament field will be unveiled on Selection Sunday.
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In the meantime, ESPN announced that the 2025-26 regular season made significant history. It was ESPN’s most-watched women’s college basketball regular season in 17 years.
“ESPN networks had its most-watched women’s college basketball regular season since 2008-09 📈,” Yahoo! Sports announced.
“South Carolina & LSU‘s Feb. 14 matchup led viewership with 1.7 million views 🔥”
ESPN is proud of the history.
“ESPN networks delivered its most-watched women’s college basketball regular season since 2008-09. Viewership for the 2025-26 campaign finished 19% above the already historic (and previous best) 2024-25 regular season with the 89 women’s games across ESPN networks averaging 333,000 viewers,” ESPN announced.
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“The ’25-26 campaign also served as the most-consumed season on record for ESPN networks with more than 3.6 billion total minutes watched of live women’s college basketball games. The network family accounted for more than half of total game minutes watched across the sport this season.”
ESPN’s most-watched games in 2025-26
Feb 14 8:40 p.m. ABC No. 3 South Carolina at No. 6 LSU 1.7 million
Feb 8 3 p.m. ABC No. 19 Tennessee at No. 3 South Carolina 1.5 million
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Feb 1 3 p.m. ABC No. 10 Oklahoma at No. 4 Texas 1.1 million
Dec 10 7 p.m. ESPN No. 11 Iowa vs. No. 10 Iowa State 1.0 million
Feb 15 3 p.m. ABC No. 4 Texas at No. 22 Tennessee 919,000
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Congrats to ESPN.
This story was originally published by The Spun on Mar 12, 2026, where it first appeared in the Sports Media section. Add The Spun as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
