NCAA Hockey Finals ESPN ratings record

Last Saturday’s NCAA Division I men’s hockey championship game between Quinnipiac and Minnesota was the most-watched Frozen Four game on ESPN platforms since 2011, the network announced Tuesday.

The Bobcats’ overtime win over the Gophers averaged 808,000 viewers during the ESPN broadcast, a 100% increase over ESPN’s 2022 men’s hockey final. This year, the championship match peaked at 1.1 million viewers.

The game aired on ESPN2 and was streamed via the ESPN app, as the network did with all games during the men’s hockey tournament. For Quinnipiac, a 3-2 win over Minnesota secured the Connecticut schools first NCAA championship in program history.

Connecticut State celebrated its second national championship as UConn secured the fifth men’s basketball championship in program history, cementing its status as a bona fide college blue blood. Only UCLA, Kentucky and North Carolina have more championships.

Quinnipiacs campus in Hamden is just a short drive from UConns campus in Storrs, but the two schools couldn’t be more different. Quinnipiac is a small private college with about 6,000 students, while UConn is a large public university with over 18,000 students.