The NCAA Division I Ladies’s Basketball Championship recreation shall be broadcast dwell on ABC for the primary time in 2023. The sport will air Sunday, April 2, at 3 p.m. ET and shall be performed at American Airways Heart in Dallas. The 2023 Ladies’s Closing 4 semifinal matchups will air on ESPN at 7 and 9:30 p.m. on Friday, March 31.
“Scheduling the Division I Ladies’s Basketball Championship on ABC has been a objective for fairly a while in our ongoing efforts to maximise the publicity of ladies’s sports activities in collaboration with the NCAA,” stated Burke Magnus, President, Programming and Unique Content material. “Ladies’s NCAA Championships proceed to generate sturdy audiences throughout the ABC/ESPN networks and this transfer represents yet one more distinctive alternative to showcase this marquee occasion and the student-athletes who’re competing for a nationwide championship.”
MORE MADNESS: 2023 Ladies’s NCAA event schedule, dates, and occasions
ESPN aired NCAA Division I Ladies’s Event video games on ABC for the primary time in 2021, with two first spherical matchups and 4 Candy 16 contests obtainable on the printed community. The pattern continued in 2021-22 season with the addition of two common season matchups on ABC, in addition to various event video games.
“It’s a benchmark announcement for ladies’s basketball in with the ability to showcase the nationwide championship recreation in Dallas for an expanded viewers on ABC for the primary time in 2023,” stated Beth Goetz, chair of the NCAA Division I Ladies’s Basketball Committee and director of athletics at Ball State. “We’re grateful to ABC/ESPN for the partnership within the continued development of the sport and championship.”
The NCAA Division I Ladies’s Basketball Committee just lately confirmed that the sector of 68 groups collaborating within the 2023 championship shall be introduced on Choice Sunday, March 12, airing on ESPN at 8 p.m. The First 4 video games shall be performed March 15-16 and can happen at campus websites. The committee additionally introduced March 24-27 taking part in dates for the 2023 regional rounds which shall be performed utilizing a two-host format with eight groups competing in Greenville, S.C., and eight groups taking part in in Seattle. The championship will observe this two-site regional format by way of 2027.
The 2022 Ladies’s Basketball Championship recreation, that includes South Carolina vs. UConn on ESPN was the most-viewed ladies’s title recreation in almost two-decades with 4.85 million viewers as South Carolina captured this system’s second nationwide title in 5 years. The nationwide semifinals averaged 2.7 million viewers, up 21 p.c year-over-year, and was the most-viewed semifinals in a decade. The total event averaged 634,000 viewers, up 16 p.c from final 12 months’s protection. Further 2022 viewership milestone particulars obtainable right here.
