2025 NCAA Tournament: Elite 8 TV ratings down from 2024, Auburn-Michigan State leads viewership

Through the first weekend of the 2025 NCAA Tournament, CBS and Turner Sports saw strong viewership. While numbers remained steady into the Sweet 16 and Elite 8, Sunday’s games saw a decrease in TV ratings from 2024.

Elite 8 viewership was down 10% from a year ago, according to data compiled by Sports Media Watch. Of course, last year’s game occurred over Easter weekend, which helped fuel a boost in ratings. This season’s Elite 8 is still up 4% from the 2023 event.

Auburn vs. Michigan State became the most-watched game of the 2025 NCAA Tournament on Sunday as 11.7 million people tuned to CBS. The Spartans tried to make things interesting down the stretch, but the Tigers pulled away to eventually seal their second-ever Final Four berth.

That game followed Houston vs. Tennessee, which averaged 7.1 million viewers. As a result, it came in as the least-watched Sunday Elite 8 game since 2008, according to Sports Media Watch.

On Saturday, Duke’s dominant victory over Alabama was the second-most watched game of the Elite 8 with 9.8 million viewers on average. It was a strong finale to the night, which started with 7.5 million people watching Florida come all the way back to defeat Texas Tech in Atlanta.

The Elite Eight matchups followed a Sweet Sixteen in which Auburn once again played in the most-watched game. More than 7.3 million people watched the Tigers defeat Michigan – which played in the previously most-watched tournament matchup, per data from Sports Media Watch and Programming Insider.

Michigan State’s win over Ole Miss came in second with 6.71 million viewers, closely followed by Duke’s victory over Arizona at 6.57 million and Alabama’s win against BYU at 5.8 million. From there, Tennessee vs. Kentucky averaged 3.56 million viewers and Florida vs. Maryland brought in 3.25 million. Data for Houston vs. Purdue and Texas Tech vs. Arkansas was not available at the time of publication.

As a whole, the 2025 NCAA Tournament is averaging 9.4 million viewers per the four networks – CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV – and 3.7 million per game through the Elite Eight, according to Sports Business Journal. That’s up just 1% from last year’s tournament and 3% from two years ago.

A chalk-filled tournament continued into the Elite Eight as all four No. 1 seeds will now head to San Antonio this week for the Final Four. Auburn will take on Florida in Friday’s opening game, and Duke vs. Houston will close things out that night at the Alamodome. The winners will advance to Monday’s national championship.