NBA viewership is beginning to stabilize after a hot start out of the gates, but still remains well above a year ago.
NBA regular season games were averaging 2.0 million viewers across NBCUniversal, ESPN and Amazon Prime Video through the third week of the season, up 36% from last year, with that increase ballooning to 74% including games on NBA TV. (NBA TV is airing fewer games than in past seasons, giving this season an advantage over past years.)
The second edition of NBC’s “Coast 2 Coast Tuesdays” topped week three with an audience of 2.0 million across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. (NBC is the only network whose streaming viewership is not tracked by Nielsen, and as such it issues a combined figure across the two measurement companies.) There were no equivalent games last year, as the NBA took the night off due to the presidential election.
On a Nielsen-only basis, the regional split of Magic-Hawks in most markets and Thunder-Clippers on the West Coast averaged a 0.9 rating and 1.54 million viewers, actually ranking second for the week behind ESPN’s Spurs-Lakers the following night.
Spurs-Lakers delivered the top Nielsen-measured audience of the week with a 0.8 and 1.56 million last Wednesday night, up a tick and 31% respectively from Sixers-Clippers last year (0.7, 1.19M). Timberwolves-Knicks led in with a 0.7 and 1.38 million, down 38% and 36% respectively from Warriors-Celtics a year ago, which marked Stephen Curry’s season debut (1.2, 2.14M).
Rounding out the week’s slate, Amazon Prime Video averaged an audience of 987,000 for its doubleheader last Friday — 1.06 million for Warriors-Nuggets and 916,000 for Rockets-Spurs, down 25 and 30 percent respectively from the equivalent games on ESPN last season, Sixers-Lakers (1.41M) and Suns-Mavericks (1.31M).
Prime is averaging 1.12 million viewers for NBA games so far this season, down 7% from the equivalent seven windows on ESPN last year (1.21M). If Prime were to maintain that pace throughout the season — certainly no guarantee in either direction given how early it is in the year — it would mark a noticeable improvement over how the streamer has fared in the first seasons of its other rights deals.
In its first season carrying NFL games in 2022, Prime Video declined 28 percent from the prior year on FOX and NFL Network. This past summer, its first season of NASCAR coverage declined 16 percent from the equivalent race weekends on FOX and FS1 last year.
Prime, as is typical, continues to skew younger than the other NBA broadcasters. Its median age of 46.8 is younger by nearly eight years than the linear networks. But in raw numbers, its average audience in adults 18-49 (562K) and 18-34 (228K) trails both NBC and ESPN.
Beyond national TV, NBA games on local RSNs and over-the-air networks this season have posted increases of 13% in ratings and 8% viewership, though exact figures were not immediately available. The increase in viewership is within the range that could be accounted for by the changes in Nielsen methodology this year, including its expansion of out-of-home viewing in February and shift to “Big Data + Panel” in September.
