Most of the viewers who ditched Lakers-Nuggets for Sunday Night Football returned for Game 3 on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s Lakers-Nuggets NBA Western Conference Finals Game 3 averaged 4.83 million viewers on TNT, up 52% from Game 2 on Sunday night, which hit a 17-year conference final low opposite Sunday Night Football (3.17M).
Viewership still fell a third from last year’s Warriors-Blazers Game 3 on ESPN (7.25M) and 38% from Rockets-Warriors on TNT in 2018 (7.80M), which aired as scheduled in May. Even those steep declines were a marked an improvement from Sunday, when Game 2 plunged 60% from last year and 58% from ’18.
Denver’s win delivered the fourth-largest audience of the NBA Playoffs, behind Game 1 last Friday (4.92M), Nuggets-Clippers Game 7 on ESPN September 15 (5.23M) and Rockets-Lakers Game 2 on ABC Labor Day weekend (5.43M). It ranks seventh among cable sportscasts since the NFL Draft, behind the former three NBA games and ESPN’s three Monday Night Football games.
On Wednesday, Celtics-Heat Game 4 averaged 4.48 million on ESPN — down 15% from Bucks-Raptors last year (5.30M) and down 44% from Celtics-Cavaliers in 2018 (7.94M). Again, those games took place as scheduled in May.
It was the tenth game of the postseason to exceed four million viewers, compared to 27 at the same point of last year’s postseason.
Celtics-Heat dominated the night’s other major sporting event, Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final on NBCSN (1.15M).
The NBA swept the key young adult demographics on Tuesday and took top honors in adults 18-34 and 18-49 on Wednesday.
