Benefiting from the same broadcast network exposure and Winter Olympics lead-in that boosted Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game, NBA All-Star Saturday also rebounded in the ratings.
Last weekend’s NBA All-Star Saturday averaged a 2.2 rating and 4.42 million viewers on NBC, with the latter figure rising to 5.36 million including a Spanish-language broadcast on Telemundo and streaming viewership measured by Adobe Analytics — the largest audience for the annual skills competition since 2017 (5.64M).
Viewership increased 58% from last year’s Nielsen-only TNT audience of 3.39 million. (NBC’s position is that because Nielsen does not track its streaming viewership, its combined Nielsen + Adobe audience figures are comparable to the Nielsen-only figures of other networks.)
The new NBA media rights deal put All-Star Saturday on broadcast television for the first time. Even when NBC had the All-Star Game from 1991-02, it did not carry the Saturday events, which aired on TNT. Like the All-Star Game itself the following day, coverage had a direct lead-in from the Winter Olympics.
Between the move from cable to broadcast, the Winter Olympics lead-in, and the general changes in Nielsen methodology — including the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to “Big Data + Panel” as currency — the event had distinct advantage over past years.
All-Star Saturday still trailed the MLB Home Run Derby — its closest equivalent — which averaged a Nielsen-only 5.73 million on ESPN last summer. With the Derby moving from ESPN to Netflix this season, it is entirely possible that the NBA’s oft-criticized event could end up as the most-watched skills competition in sports this year, albeit with all the above caveats.
In other All-Star weekend action, last Friday’s Celebrity Game averaged 1.25 million on ESPN — up 3% from last year (1.21M), well within the range that could be explained by Nielsen methodological changes. The Rising Stars Challenge aired exclusively on Peacock, which is not Nielsen rated.
