Nielsens: Olympics Ratings, EPL, NBA

NBCSN’s Winter Olympics ratings have set network highs, albeit with some caveats. In other news, the Premier League scored its top audience in a year, and Cavaliers-Celtics ratings soared despite a lopsided result.

Winter Olympics Hitting Timeslot Highs on NBCSN

Daytime Winter Olympics coverage scored a 2.6 rating and 4.5 million viewers on NBCSN Saturday afternoon, according to Nielsen fast-nationals — a network record for the timeslot (2-5 PM ET). Keep in mind NBC has pulled larger audiences in slightly different windows, most recently 5.2 million for the 2016 NASCAR Brickyard 400 (3:28-6:04 PM).

On Sunday night, NBCSN scored 3.0 million viewers for primetime Olympic coverage, its largest audience in the 7-11 PM ET window since 2015. Again, the network has earned larger audiences in slightly different windows, including 3.1 million for a NASCAR race from Darlington last fall (6:26-10:13 PM).

Leading Into Olympics, EPL Hits High

Saturday’s Manchester City-Leicester City English Premier League match, which led into NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage, had 1.15 million viewers — the largest EPL audience on a single network since Manchester United-Tottenham last year (1.16M).

Cavs-Celtics Overnights Up Big on ABC

Sunday’s Cavaliers-Celtics NBA game scored a 3.6 overnight rating on ABC, up 56% from last year (Spurs-Knicks: 2.3) and the weekend’s top non-Olympic sporting event in the metered markets. Cleveland’s easy win also ranks as ABC’s top Sunday regular season game since 2015 (Cavs-Rockets: 3.7).

Head-to-head, the NBA more-than-doubled PGA golf on CBS (1.5) and NASCAR on FS1 (1.4). As one would expect, it was nearly doubled by NBC’s competing Winter Olympics window (6.7).

On Saturday, Spurs-Warriors had a 2.2 on ABC’s NBA Saturday Primetime — down 46% from Warriors-Thunder last year, which marked Kevin Durant‘s return to Oklahoma City.

[Numbers from NBC Sports PR 2.11, 2.12, Sports Business Daily 2.12]