Women’s college basketball became a sports mainstay this season, attracting enormous viewership and mainstream cultural relevance — which led to new heights for the sport in the betting market.
Sunday’s NCAA championship game between Iowa and South Carolina was the most-bet women’s college basketball game of all time at multiple major sportsbooks, including ESPN BET, Caesars, BetMGM, DraftKings and FanDuel — with the latter three confirming that it was also their most-bet women’s sporting event of all time.
The game, which saw the Gamecocks avenge their 2023 Final Four loss to the Hawkeyes, takes over the record mantle from the UConn-Iowa matchup in this year’s Final Four, which itself broke the record set by LSU-Iowa in the Elite Eight.
ESPN BET told ESPN that Sunday’s contest took 20% more bets than Friday’s game, while FanDuel said it took 22% more money, and Caesars VP of trading Craig Mucklow says the book took “double” the handle of the previous record.
South Point Casino sportsbook director Chris Andrews tweeted that Sunday’s contest took about as many tickets as either of the 2024 men’s Final Four games and had handle “similar to a well-bet college football game.”
FanDuel also notes that the 2024 title game saw a 155% increase in handle and a 205% increase in ticket count compared to the 2023 national championship, which had been the record holder before this season. DraftKings director of sportsbook and race operations Johnny Avello told ESPN that its record holder before this year’s NCAA tournament was Iowa’s win over Nebraska in this year’s Big Ten tournament championship game, but that each Iowa game in the NCAA tournament “overshadowed” it and that the national championship game numbers were “astronomical.”
With multiple individual game records set throughout, the 2024 NCAA tournament was a watershed moment for betting on women’s sports. Two central factors worked in tandem to get the sport to this moment: increased media exposure and Iowa star Caitlin Clark.
“We handled a limited amount of [women’s] games in the past. There wasn’t a lot of interest because the games weren’t being shown,” Avello said. “This year, you could have watched many games on national TV. And there were great players this year; Caitlin Clark being probably the No. 1 focus. But there were more players besides her.”
Added Caesars college basketball trader Grant Tucker before the Final Four: “The betting handle just follows wherever [Clark] goes.”
It remains to be seen whether women’s college basketball can maintain momentum in the betting markets now that Clark is departing for the WNBA. Iowa opened as 30-1 underdogs to win the 2025 national title, while South Carolina opened as the favorites at +250, per ESPN BET odds.
