A matchup of the reigning league and Finals MVPs topped the sports viewership charts for Tuesday, January 16.
Tuesday’s Nuggets-Sixers NBA regular season game averaged 1.68 million viewers on TNT, the largest sports audience of the day and up 98% from Bucks-Raptors on the same January night last year (849K). (Compared to the equivalent date of last season, January 10, viewership jumped 108% from 809,000 for Thunder-Heat.)
In the nightcap, Thunder-Clippers averaged 1.15 million — up 25% from Sixers-Clippers last year (922K). (Compared to the equivalent date of last season, viewership actually declined 12% from Suns-Warriors.)
Outside of the NBA, the top sporting event Tuesday night was a Kansas-Oklahoma State men’s college basketball game on ESPN at 650,000 viewers — down 44% from Georgia-Kentucky last year (1.17M). Syracuse-Pittsburgh averaged 566,000 earlier in the night, down 63% from Kansas-Kansas State a year ago (1.54M). On ESPN2, a rescheduled Florida-Tennessee game averaged 332,000 in an early 5 PM ET timeslot.
Elsewhere in the college game, BTN averaged 213,000 for Wisconsin-Penn State. An FS1 tripleheader topped out at 178,000 for Butler-Xavier, followed by 175,000 for St. John’s-Seton Hall and 129,000 for Utah State-New Mexico.
Beyond live sports action, ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” averaged its second-largest audience yet with 586,000 viewers. The all-time high was set the previous day. ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” (962K), “First Take” (842K) and “Get Up!” (615K) also delivered some of their largest audiences of the football season.
Tuesday, January 16 sports viewership
Updated chart:
Original chart below:
