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B1G Tournament nets record-breaking viewership for Big Ten Network
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The B1G was considered the strongest and best conference in college basketball this season. Every night was must-watch television, regardless of who was playing.
So is it really any surprise that this year’s B1G Tournament saw a record-breaking viewership number over the first three days? Big Ten Network announced that it was the most-watch conference tourney in the network’s history.
On Tuesday morning, the network released a statement on the record-breaking viewership:
Across the entire tournament on BTN, the total audience grew by +14% to more than 5.2 million viewers and the average audience for each game grew by +15% to 528,220. The first-round average increased by +9% to 367,262, the second-round average increased by +11% to 464,051 and the Friday’s quarterfinals had an average audience of 667,272 viewers, representing an increase of +18%.
Driving the quarterfinal increase was Friday night’s game between Iowa and Wisconsin, which earned 938,784 viewers, the highest-rated game in network history. That topped the previous high of 813,951 viewers for a 2018 Big Ten Tournament quarterfinal matchup between Ohio State vs. Penn State.
This year’s B1G Tournament was moved from the United Center in Chicago to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there were no fans permitted at basketball games in the conference this season, the league did allow 8,000 fans to attend the tournament games.
Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB