In Photos: Andraya Carter rocks special 'Everyone Watches Women's Sports' t-shirt after whopping 18.7 million views during national championship game

The 2024 NCAA women's basketball national championship game won 87-75 by the South Carolina Gamecocks over Caitlin Clark's Iowa Hawkeyes shattered the viewership record of the tournament.

The game was watched by 18.7 million viewers, the most-watched female college basketball game since 1992 and the most-watched basketball game for both genders since 2019.

ESPN analyst Andraya Carter recently posted a picture of herself on Instagram wearing an 'Everyone Watches Women's Sports' t-shirt with the caption:

"I FULLY intend on spamming you all with pictures from National Championship weekend BUT… I’ll start with this… Because 18.7 MILLION speaks for itself 🤩 Records were broken on the court and on the TV screens and (even though a lot of us already knew it) it’s now undisputed: EVERYONE WATCHES WOMEN’S SPORTS. 🤞🏽🙌🏽🫶🏽," Carter wrote.

The unstoppable growth of the women's game

During the 2021 NCAA tournament, then-Oregon guard Sedona Prince shared a TikTok video of the disparity between the male and female weight rooms provided by the organizers.

The video sparked outrage at the quality and space accorded to the women vis a vis the men and in a way sparked some of the growth witnessed by the women's game with investment in better equipment.

South Carolina guard Te-Hina Paopao revealed to The Athletic the change wrought by that single TikTok video.

“That one TikTok changed all of March Madness and brought so much attention to it,” Paopao said. “It’s amazing how one thing can change a whole bunch of things.”

View on TikTok

A consulting firm came up with the Kaplan Report after being hired by the NCAA to conduct a gender equity assessment and the findings revealed just how favored the men's teams were during March Madness.

Last year, Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark and LSU Tigers forward Angel Reese battled it out in an epic national championship game won by the latter 102-85.

The game was littered with controversy, with Reese's trash talk involving the use of John Cena's 'you can't see me' gesture and Steph Curry's 'ring me' celebration.

The game obliterated the viewership record in women's basketball with 9.9 million viewers and ushered in a new era. This year's rematch pitting college basketball's main protagonists shattered last year's record with 12.3 million viewers.

After the national championship game pitting the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Iowa Hawkeyes, coach Dawn Staley paid tribute to the record-breaking Caitlin Clark for her role in growing the game.

The 2024 NCAA tournament has removed any doubt that the women's game is on an upward trajectory.