The NBA on TNT led the way on another slow Tuesday night in sports television.
A Sixers-Celtics NBA regular season game was the most-watched sporting event of Tuesday, February 27, with an average of 1.18 million viewers on TNT — up slightly from Lakers-Grizzlies last year (1.16M). The Rockets-Thunder nightcap followed with just 806,000, placing third for the night and down 19% from Timberwolves-Clippers a year ago (998K). The doubleheader averaged 989,000, down 9% from last year’s 1.08 million.
Sandwiched between the NBA games in second-place was a Kentucky-Mississippi State men’s college basketball game on ESPN at 934,000 viewers — up 4% from NC State-Duke a year ago (899K). Texas-Texas Tech followed with 479,000, down 47% from the Red Raiders’ year-ago matchup with Kansas (896K).
Over on ESPN2, Cincinnati-Houston averaged 252,000 and NC State-Florida State followed with 158,000 — down sharply from last year’s considerably stronger doubleheader of Iowa-Indiana (608K) and Arkansas-Tennessee (564K). ESPN and ESPN2 combined to average 461,000 for their four games, down 38% from last year’s 743,000.
In other college action, BTN pulled 240,000 for Penn State-Iowa, preceded by an Indiana-Northwestern women’s game at just 49,000. FS1 failed to crack the 100K mark for any of its three games, with Georgetown-Villanova at 87,000, Nevada-Colorado State at 63,000 and a St. John’s-Marquette women’s game at 38,000.
Elsewhere Tuesday, the FS1 talk show “Undisputed” averaged 50,000 viewers — the show’s smallest audience since returning from hiatus last fall. By comparison, the ESPN2 re-air of “Get Up!” averaged 79,000 in the competing window. “Undisputed” was also outdrawn head-to-head by a first round Dubai Open tennis match between Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Shevchenko, which averaged 54,000 on Tennis Channel.
Tuesday, February 27 sports ratings
Updated chart:
Original chart below:
