LeBron James’ most significant individual achievement helped TNT to one of its best regular season audiences in recent years.
Tuesday’s Thunder-Lakers NBA regular season game, in which James surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, averaged a 1.7 rating and 2.98 million viewers on TNT — the network’s largest regular season audience outside of Opening Night since Clippers-Lakers on opening night of the “bubble” restart in July 2020 (3.35M). Excluding that anomalous circumstance, it was the most-watched since Lakers-Blazers in October 2018, James’ first game with the Lakers (3.31M).
The Lakers’ loss, which peaked with 3.72 million viewers from 11:45 PM-Midnight ET, ranks ninth for the season among NBA games behind the five Christmas Day games, the Opening Night doubleheader, and a pair of Saturday night games on ABC (1/28 Lakers-Celtics: 3.69M; 12/10 Celtics-Warriors: 3.14M).
The 25-30 Lakers have played in four of the nine most-watched games this season, tied with the Celtics as the most of any team.
Largest NBA audiences this season (through 2/7)
Viewership dwindled after James set the record, falling from 3.72 million at 11:45 and 3.64 million at Midnight to 2.40 million in the final full quarter-hour.
There are no strong analogues to James’ accomplishment Tuesday night, which marked the first time in 38 years that the all-time scoring record was broken. When James passed Kobe Bryant for third on the all-time list three years ago, the Lakers’ loss to the Sixers averaged slightly more viewers (2.99M) on broadcast network ABC. When he passed Karl Malone for #2 all-time last season, the game was not nationally televised.
On a night dominated by live event coverage, Thunder-Lakers was Tuesday’s top single-network television program in each of the key young adult demographics (1.3 in 18-49, 1.2 in 18-34 and 1.35 in 25-54), a distinction that comes with the caveat that the State of the Union address aired across multiple networks simultaneously.
Earlier Tuesday, Suns-Nets averaged 1.21 million — up 46% from Celtics-Nets a year ago (824K).
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 2.8)
