The first playoff series in four years to pit LeBron James against Stephen Curry delivered as expected in the ratings.
Tuesday’s Lakers-Warriors second round NBA playoff Game 1 averaged 7.36 million viewers on TNT, the largest first or second round audience on cable in 11 years — since Lakers-Thunder Game 5 on TNT in 2012 (8.15M). Viewership jumped 38% from Warriors-Grizzlies Game 2 in the same window last year (5.32M). Ratings were not immediately available.
Across all networks, the Lakers’ win ranks fifth behind four Sunday afternoon games on ABC: Games 4 and 7 of Warriors-Kings in the first round (7.52M; 9.88M) and last season’s Warriors-Grizzlies Game 1 (7.71M) and Bucks-Celtics Game 7 (7.48M).
As with all multi-year highs, keep in mind that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen’s final nationals prior to three years ago.
Lakers-Warriors marks the first playoff meeting between James and Curry since they met in four-straight NBA Finals while James was a member of the Cavaliers. James’ Lakers did play Curry’s Warriors in a 2021 Play-in Tournament game that averaged in the neighborhood of 5.6 million viewers on ESPN.
Game 1 easily outpaced all other games in this year’s second round, no surprise given the high-profile nature of the series. None of the other games has exceeded 5.38 million (Heat-Knicks Game 1 on ABC).
Those other games have still performed well, with Tuesday’s Heat-Knicks Game 2 (4.71M) up 15% from Bucks-Celtics Game 2 last year (4.10M) and Monday’s doubleheader of Sixers-Celtics Game 1 (4.74M) and Suns-Nuggets Game 2 (4.54M) up 24% and 15% respectively year-over-year (Sixers-Heat Game 1: 3.82M; Mavericks-Suns Game 1: 3.94M).
All five second round windows that can be compared to last year have increased by double-digits.
In a rarity, the NBA delivered the two largest primetime audiences on all of television Tuesday night. While it is common for the NBA to take top honors in the key young adult demographics, it is far less so for the league to claim an outright viewership victory this early in the playoffs.
NBA games swept the key demographics both Monday and Tuesday, with Warriors-Lakers at a 2.7 in 18-49, a 2.5 in 18-34 and a 2.9 in 25-54.
