It was even bigger than we thought.

On Tuesday, Nielsen released official ratings data for Sunday's women's college basketball championship game, revealing that South Carolina's victory over Iowa averaged 18.9 million viewers, slightly more than ESPN's preliminary tally released Monday. 

The outsized performance of the ESPN-ABC simulcast made the game not only the biggest women's basketball TV event ever, breaking a one-week-old record of 12.3 million viewers established by Iowa's women's tournament semifinal win over LSU on April 1, it produced the biggest TV audience for hoops of any kind — men’s or women’s, college or pro — since the 2019 men’s college title game. (Nearly 23 million viewers, on average, watched Virginia beat Texas Tech in overtime that year.)

This year’s women's title game doubled the audience of last year's women's championship matchup between Iowa and LSU, which averaged a previous all-time high 9.915 million viewers.

The NBA has drawn bigger TV audiences, but not for some time. Last year's five-game Finals matchup, featuring the Denver Nuggets beating the Miami Heat in five games, averaged 11.64 million viewers for ABC.

Notably, Monday night's men's college basketball championship game featuring University of Connecticut beating Purdue averaged 14.8 million viewers on CBS. 

The catalyst for the women's games surge in popularity has been Iowa star player Caitlin Clark, who averaged 28.43 points per game this season and drove consumption of women's college basketball to previously unimagined levels.

Clark will now take her talents to the WNBA, which averaged 627,000 viewers for ABC last season, the best performance for the league in 11 years.

The Veteran’s Day holiday weekend lineup of live TV sports events begins on the football field as the NFL travels to Germany on Sunday for a morning matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and the Tom Brady-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers on NFL Network. 

Also on Sunday, CBS and Fox will offer regional NFL afternoon telecasts, followed by NBC's Sunday Night Football contest between the Los Angeles Chargers and San Francisco 49’ers.

In the octagon, ESPN will distribute the UFC 281 pay-per-view fight card on Saturday, headlined by the Israel Adesanya-Alex Pereira middleweight championship fight. 

Also on Saturday via PPV is the return of retired undefeated champion Floyd Mayweather, as he steps into the ring to fight an afternoon exhibition bout against MMA fighter Deji Olatunji. DAZN on Saturday will deliver a fight card featuring a main event junior welterweight bout between Montana Love and Stevie Spark.

The weekend college football schedule begins Saturday with a new top-ranked team, Georgia, who will take on Mississippi State on ESPN. Second-ranked Ohio State will face Indiana on Fox, while third-ranked Michigan battles Nebraska and fourth-ranked TCU travels to meet Texas on ABC. Other games featuring top 10-ranked teams include No. 6 Oregon-Washington (Fox), No. 7 LSU-Arkansas (ESPN), No.9 Alabama-No. 11 Ole Miss (CBS) and No. 10 Clemson-Louisville (ESPN).

NBC will tip off its women’s college basketball coverage on Saturday with a matchup between California and Notre Dame in the inaugural Citi Shamrock Classic, the first live women’s college basketball game on NBC ever, and the first college basketball game of any kind since 1988, according to network officials. ■  

Fox Sports Go is set live stream the women’s college basketball game between Mount St. Joseph University and Hiram College, that will also air on Nov. 2 at 2 p.m on Fox Sports Regional Networks.

Fox College Sports and Fox Sports Ohio will also televise the game, and the streaming will be available to all users regardless of their video providers.

Freshman for Mount St. Joseph Lauren Hill will have get the chance to achieve her dream of playing in one college basketball game, after the NCAA agreed to play the game earlier. Hill was diagnosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), a form of brain cancer that is currently an incurable condition.

Fox Sports Go is available through iOS, Android, Kindle Fire tablets and Fire phones, select Windows devices, Surface Tablets and on desktops.

Fox Sports will televise more than 200 men’s and women’s college basketball games this season from several major conferences, Fox Sports executives said Tuesday.

The Fox broadcast network will air a minimum of 10 college basketball contests, beginning with the Nov. 4 exhibition contest between Northwood and Villanova. Fox Sports 1 will carry more than 150 men’s and women’s contests, including the entire Big East men’s tournament, the Conference USA men’s championship game, the Big East women’s tournament semifinals and final and the full Big 12 women’s tournament, said network officials.

Fox Sports 1 will tip off its coverage Nov. 16, with the Creighton-Chicago State game, followed by doubleheaders on back-to-back nights. On Nov. 17 the network will air the Villanova-Maryland Eastern Shore and Providence-Binghamton games, while on Nov. 18 the network will televise the Xavier-Long Beach State and DePaul-Drake contests.

College basketball games on Fox broadcast network, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Fox Sports Regional Networks and Fox College Sports also can be seen on Fox Sports’ Fox Sports Go app, said network officials.