BATON ROUGE — The LSU softball team’s 13-inning 2-1 victory over defending national champion Oklahoma in game 10 of the 2001 Women’s College World Series was viewed by a record 1.57 million fans, according to Coordinating Producer of NCAA Productions, Chris Farrow.
The 1,574,400 television audience on ESPN2 was the most in the network’s history of softball broadcasts.
Altogether, more than 13.8 million fans in 5.4 million households viewed the Division I national championship series on ESPN and ESPN2, including almost 2.5 million for the championship game between Arizona and UCLA on ESPN.
The total for the series was the fourth-highest for an NCAA Championship event in the 2000-01 season, trailing only the 64-game Division I men’s basketball tournament, the 63-game Division I women’s basketball tournament and the 2000 baseball College World Series.
For the second consecutive season, the number of WCWS championship game viewers topped every Major League Baseball game on ESPN and ESPN2 over the Memorial Day weekend.