After a slight dip for the opening weekend, NBA playoff viewership bounced back in a big way thanks to back-to-back weeknight doubleheaders on primetime broadcast television.
NBCUniversal averaged a combined 4.9 million viewers across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics for its six NBA playoff games through Tuesday, up 38% from last year’s equivalent windows, and lifting the overall NBA playoff viewership average to 4.4 million across NBCU, ESPN/ABC and Prime Video — up 9% from last year on ESPN/ABC and TNT, up 17% from last year including games on NBA TV, and officially the highest average through the first 12 games of the playoffs since 1993.
(Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is mere months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will generally skew historical comparisons.)
The opening weekend of the playoffs declined 3%, but a pair of primetime, weeknight doubleheaders on NBC made up all of that shortfall and then some. NBC averaged 4.6 million viewers on Monday night and 4.9 million on Tuesday, the latter ranking as the highest average for a day of first round Game 2s since 1998 — the last time before this year that Game 2s aired on broadcast (also NBC). All of the intervening Game 2s were non-exclusive games on cable.
Tuesday’s Rockets-Lakers Game 2 averaged a combined 5.2 million on NBC across Nielsen and Adobe, the highest for a Game 2 in the first round since 2011 — when Hornets-Lakers drew 5.4 million on TNT.
The Lakers’ win, which peaked with 5.8 million viewers, increased 27% from a Nielsen-only 4.1 million for Timberwolves-Lakers on TNT and truTV in the same window last year. (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.)
Trail Blazers-Spurs Game 2 led in with 4.6 million, up 105% from Grizzlies-Thunder a year ago (2.25M). The night’s third game — Sixers-Celtics — aired on Peacock and NBCSN, neither of which are Nielsen-rated.
On Monday night, NBC averaged a combined 4.7 million for Hawks-Knicks Game 2, followed by Timberwolves-Nuggets at 4.4 million — up 43 and 27 percent respectively from last year’s equivalent TNT Sports doubleheader of Pistons-Knicks (3.3M) and Clippers-Nuggets (3.5M). The night’s third game, Raptors-Cavaliers, aired on Peacock and NBCSN.
The Monday and Tuesday games marked the first weeknight primetime opening round NBA playoff games on broadcast television since a Friday night Cavaliers-Knicks Game 3 on ABC in 2023.
As previously noted, NBC averaged 5.7 million for Trail Blazers-Spurs and 5.0 million for Magic-Pistons on Sunday night.
Between the six games on NBC and three on ABC, nine of the 14 NBA playoff games through Tuesday aired on broadcast television — compared to 11 total before the Finals last year. That is a higher percentage of games on broadcast through the first four days of the postseason (64%) than even in NBC’s previous run with the league. In 2002, NBC aired back-to-back tripleheaders on the opening weekend of the playoffs, but still accounted for only half of the 12 total games over the first four days.
