Sports TV: Duke-UNC sets new season high

There’s nothing like a heated rivalry to boost sports TV ratings.

Just ask ESPN, which scored with its telecast of the college basketball game between archrivals Duke and North Carolina on Saturday. The game averaged 4.06 million total viewers, according to Nielsen, the most-watched college game of the season on any network.

That was also up 28 percent from the teams’ second meeting last season, according to Sports Media Watch. That game aired in an earlier timeslot.

Saturday’s game also drew another 103,000 viewers through the streaming service WatchESPN. That’s a platform record for a college basketball game.

Those numbers bode well for this weekend’s conference championship games, especially if any high-profile matchups emerge.

In other sports ratings:

- Fox’s airing of the second NASCAR race of the season on Sunday averaged 6.8 million total viewers, down 3 percent from last year. The race from Atlanta also posted a 3.8 household rating, the lowest for a second race of the season since at least 1998, according to SMW.

- On Saturday Fox averaged 728,000 viewers for a match between the U.S. women’s national soccer team and England. That was the most-watched women’s friendly since a match versus South Korea leading up to the 2015 Women’s World Cup.

Tags: College Basketball, duke, espn, nascar, north carolina, sports ratings, sports tv, sports tv ratings, women's soccer