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2026 NCAA Baseball Tournament: ESPN announces record TV ratings for Regionals

ns_headshot_2024-clearby: Nick Schultz3 hours agoNickSchultz_7

Through the first round of the 2026 NCAA Baseball Tournament, ESPN drew huge TV ratings. The network announced it scored the most-watched Regional on record.

Viewership increased 38% year-over-year as the tournament got underway late last week and through the weekend. Tennessee’s season-ending loss to VCU drew the highest viewership of the opening round with 804,000 viewers on Saturday. That made it the third-most watched Regional game on record.

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In fact, Saturday’s games led the charge for ESPN. Auburn’s 17-13 win over NC State averaged 659,000 viewers, which was the second-highest TV ratings for the 2026 Regional and Top-10 viewership for the round on record. Arkansas vs. Kansas also brought 560,000 viewers in primetime on Saturday.

According to Programming Insider, Kansas’ win over Arkansas on Sunday also averaged 473,000 viewers in primetime. On Monday, West Virginia’s walk-off victory against Kentucky in the 10th inning brought 489,000 viewers on average, as well, per Programming Insider.

ESPN’s TV ratings surge through Regionals at the 2026 NCAA Baseball Tournament followed a strong regular season. Across its networks, ESPN saw viewership increase 49% year-over-year as part of its best regular season since 2012.

Texas A&M vs. LSU held the top two spots during the regular season with 382,000 viewers on April 17 and 375,000 on April 15. Of course, it’s important to note the 2026 season is the first since Nielsen introduced its Big Data + Panel metric to measure viewership.

More on a historic NCAA Regional round

The Regional round was a historic one as the 2026 NCAA Baseball Tournament got underway. UCLA became the second No. 1 overall seed in tournament history to be eliminated before the regional final with its loss to Saint Mary’s.

No. 2 overall seed Georgia Tech also fell in the Atlanta Regional. That means the top two teams are off the board entering Super Regionals.

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The 2026 NCAA Baseball Tournament will continue with Super Regionals, which get underway Friday as the final 16 teams vie for spots in the College World Series. From there, the final eight teams will head to Omaha starting June 12.