In tribute to a fallen great, over a million viewers made a four-year-old NBA game Monday’s most-watched sports program.
A rebroadcast of Kobe Bryant’s final NBA game, an April 2016 matchup against Utah in which he scored 60 points, averaged 1.09 million viewers on ESPN Monday night. It was the day’s most-watched sports program, edging the preceding North Carolina-NC State college basketball game (1.01M).
The telecast outdrew several live NBA games this season, including Clippers-Heat on ESPN three nights earlier (1.08M). It more-than-doubled the audience of the Kansas-Oklahoma State college basketball game it bumped to ESPN2 (493K).
Bryant’s final game averaged 3.5 million viewers in its initial 2016 airing, despite airing on ESPN2 opposite the Warriors’ record-setting 73rd win of the season.
The re-air was a tribute to Bryant, who died Sunday in a helicopter accident that killed eight other people, including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna.
The tragedy has overshadowed the NBA season, rendering numbers for all games since irrelevant. Within hours of the news, Celtics-Pelicans averaged a 1.4 rating and 2.24 million viewers on ESPN Sunday evening. As it is likely that many viewers were tuning in for discussion of Bryant, there is no relevant comparison to last year’s window (Bucks-Thunder: 1.1, 1.79M).
As for the games that took place prior to the news, ABC averaged a 1.9 and 2.99 million for Lakers-Sixers on NBA Saturday Primetime — down 27% in ratings and 30% in viewership from last year (2.6, 4.29M) and down 32% and 36% respectively from 2018 (2.8, 4.68M). The Celtics played the Warriors both years.
The previously-mentioned Clippers-Heat game on ESPN Friday night declined 22% in ratings (to 0.7) and 20% in viewership (to 1.08M) from a low-profile Spurs-Timberwolves matchup last year (0.9, 1.34M).
