ESPN gave women’s tournament big showcase it deserved. And got rewarded with big ratings.

CLEVELAND ­— ESPN and ABC gave the women’s Final Four the Super Bowl treatment.

Forty cameras, including one that whizzes along a rail on the floor during the action. Seven high-tech production trucks, the same tractor trailers you see at Monday Night Football games. A separate editing truck. More than 400 people on site in Bristol, Conn., working from headquarters and in Charlotte, N.C. for the Sue Bird-Diana Taurasi show. Analysts who appeared on pretty much every property the networks have, from Good Morning America to First Take to Sports Center.

No expense was spared, no shortcuts taken, no corners cut.

“I think we brought a lot of gravitas,” Kate Jackson, vice president of production at ESPN. “I was here in 2016. And the tournament didn’t look like this. Play didn’t look like this. Our coverage didn’t look like this. It’s amazing.

“But I do feel like this is a sport that’s been building for a very long time, and this is just the coming-out party. Last year was an amuse bouche.”

Women’s basketball, and women’s sports, have been gaining momentum over the last few years. When an average of 12.3 million people watched last year’s title game between LSU and Iowa, shattering the previous record, it put everyone on notice that the event needed to be treated like a blue-chip event.

That was reinforced during the regular season, when there seemed to be a new ratings record set each week as Caitlin Clark chased first the women’s and then the all-time scoring records.

ESPN was already invested — literally and figuratively, having signed a new eight-year deal with the NCAA in January worth a reported $115 million a year that includes championships in 40 sports (21 women’s events and 19 men’s). So the question became how could ESPN elevate what it was already doing?

Read more about women’s basketball: Iowa-South Carolina game smashes TV ratings record

It struck, as Jackson described it, “lightning in a bottle,” with its studio show featuring Elle Duncan, Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike. The three drew rave reviews for their chemistry, insightful analysis and humor, with many comparing them to the “Inside the NBA” crew that has set the standard for studio shows.

A change in ESPN’s coverage, offering more studio shows

A decision was made to add more studio programming in the early rounds, recognizing there would be a need for more analysis, more “big picture” conversations because there were going to be new fans and people who hadn’t paid close attention during the season.

“We were trying to find ways to serve that better,” Jackson said.

ESPN and ABC were also intentional with how games the first two weekends of the tournament were programmed. It wasn’t happenstance that Clark and Iowa’s first-round game was showcased on ABC on a Saturday afternoon. Or that the Iowa-LSU rematch, along with the UConn-USC game featuring one of the game’s established stars and one of its up-and-comers in Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins, were on Monday night, when there were no games in the men’s tournament.

“You’re going to have the day and night to yourself,” said Nick Dawson, senior vice president of college sports programming and acquisitions for ESPN. “That was intentional and additive to the (existing) storylines.”

The networks’ efforts paid off — and then some.

An average of 18.7 million people tuned in for Sunday afternoon’s title game between Clark’s Iowa and undefeated South Carolina, with the audience peaking at a whopping 24 million. That made it the most-watched basketball game, men’s or women’s, college or pro, since 2019.

It also was an 89% increase from last year, and a 285% — yes, you read that right — increase since 2022.

“Anyone would be lying if they said they expected this,” Dawson said. “I think we certainly expected that, if the storylines played out, that we would do very well and probably surpass last year, just based on what we saw in the regular season, what we saw with the Caitlin story, amongst all the others.”

But this went beyond the Clark effect.

Will the interest continue to build?

Bonkers as the numbers were for Friday night’s game between Clark’s Iowa and Bueckers’ UConn — an average of 14.2 million people watched — Dawson said he was even more encouraged by the ratings for the first semifinal, between South Carolina and N.C. State. It was the lead-in game and it wound up being a blowout. Despite that, more than 7 million tuned in.

That bodes well for the game’s future post-Clark, who is all-but-certain of being the No. 1 pick in Monday’s WNBA draft.

“The biggest question we’re trying to answer is, what is lasting?” Dawson said. “That’s encouraging and suggests there is a meaningful increase in interest and awareness for the game overall that we believe can continue on.”

The challenge now is how can ESPN continue elevating the tournament within the constraints it has.

Unlike the men’s tournament, or Monday Night Football, the women’s tournament is mostly played in basketball arenas, where there is less space. The truck bay at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse was completely full, and every outlet was spoken for.

“Think about it like you have plugged every single outlet in your whole house and you’re like, `I feel like I want another Christmas tree.’ OK, how do we do that?” Jackson said. “This is clearly bigger than it’s ever been before. What do we need to just think differently about? And that can be anything. That can be the staffing that you bring from a production, behind-the-scenes standpoint. Are we thinking about it in the right way? Are we scheduling people in the right way?”

Putting the title game on ABC has benefitted ratings. And while some have complained that it should also be in prime time, Dawson said the NFL has been instructive.

Every year, he said, the NFL’s most-viewed window is Sunday afternoon, around 4:30 p.m. The Super Bowl usually kicks off around 6:30 p.m.

“We don’t feel like we’re limiting the audience by where it is now,” Dawson said. “But if there’s an opportunity in the future, and the conversation makes sense for us internally to look at a later start time, we’re certainly willing to evaluate that.

“I think there’s a sweet spot somewhere between where we are now and five, six o’clock.”

While women’s basketball is commanding most of the attention, there’s also been an increase in interest for gymnastics. Softball. Volleyball. ESPN is looking to see not only what it learned from this tournament, but whether any of it can be applied to other sports it broadcasts.

Because this season didn’t happen in a vacuum, Jackson said. Women’s sports are finally getting the attention they deserve, and that spotlight isn’t going to fade.

“Women’s sports is at an arrival right now. I don’t think that this is a peak that’s going to have a fall,” Jackson said. “This is the time for women’s sports. I think people are now just sort of like, `Wow, they’re pretty awesome.’”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ESPN invested in women’s NCAA tournament and reaped ratings reward