Welcome back to “The Needle,” a ratings-focused column on Sports Media Watch that will break down the numbers, attempt to put some context behind the data, and discuss broader trends in measurement and television viewing.
Milestone might be an overstatement, but it is certainly notable that the only Game 7 in the second round of the NBA Playoffs, and the only NBA game of the weekend, will air on Amazon Prime Video Sunday night. Not on NBC or ABC, the two over-the-air broadcast networks that regularly carry games on Sundays. NBC in particular has established “Sunday Night Basketball” as the most-watched NBA telecast window during the regular season and playoffs, but instead will carry “Sunday Night Baseball” in that slot this weekend.
It is not entirely clear yet what led to Prime Video getting Sunday’s game, but whether it was a contractual requirement or a decision by the league, the end result is that an NBA with two over-the-air broadcast network partners will distribute one of the biggest games of the season exclusively via streaming.
The burning question in sports media today is whether and how much leagues are sacrificing viewers in the name of revenue by shifting events to streaming services. The position of the most powerful and popular sports league, the NFL, is that streaming services are on par with their linear counterparts. If couched with terms like “arguably” and “you can make a case,” NFL executives including the commissioner himself have been consistent in describing streaming services as widely used platforms whose availability is on par with — or superior to — linear platforms.
“We think our fans are already there, that’s why we’re going there,” NFL EVP/media distribution Hans Schroeder said of streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video in a Friday conference call. “We think we’re better serving them on the platforms where they’re already viewing and spending their time.”
The NBA has not been as outspoken as the NFL, but it has not needed to be. The federal investigation into the NFL’s streaming deals is not necessarily limited to one league, but the NFL would clearly seem to be the impetus and main focus. Even so, the NBA’s actions speak for themselves, and the league has not treated Prime Video thus far as if it is a lesser platform.
Contractually, Prime Video gets the entire NBA Cup knockout round, the entire Play-in Tournament, and starting next year, a full conference final every-other-year. Nearly all of that inventory aired on cable under the prior deal, so this is not a case of broadcast television losing inventory to streaming. At the very least, it would seem clear that the NBA views Prime no differently than TNT or ESPN, which carried most of that inventory in prior years and aired their fair share of game sevens.
For a league that shifted hard from broadcast to cable a quarter-century ago, being on par with TNT and ESPN means getting some of the biggest games of the season. In an era of increasing scrutiny regarding the availability of games, plus a concurrent rise in broadcast network inventory, there appears to be a rising expectation that the biggest games should be available to the largest audiences. What might have been business as usual in 2003 stands out a bit more in 2026.
Under the old NBA media rights deal, Sunday’s Cavaliers-Pistons Game 7 would have almost certainly aired at 3:30 PM ET on ABC, which along with ESPN has the Eastern Conference Finals this year. So far this postseason, ABC’s mid-afternoon window has pulled audiences of 5.75, 5.68, and 4.61 million respectively for Magic-Pistons Game 7 in round one, Knicks-Sixers Game 4 in round two, and Suns-Thunder Game 1 on the opening weekend of the playoffs.
On the equivalent Sunday last year, the network drew 6.34 million for Nuggets-Thunder Game 7, and two years ago it drew 6.45 million for Pacers-Knicks Game 7 — the latter figure surpassed comfortably by Nuggets-Timberwolves Game 7 on TNT later that night (8.41M). That was one of a handful of occasions during the previous rights deal when TNT drew a larger audience on a Sunday night than ABC did earlier in the day. Broadcast exposure has not always guaranteed a larger audience.
Under the new deal, there is little doubt that Sunday night has become the NBA window of record. NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” has been the most significant new addition to NBA media coverage since the same network began airing tripleheaders in the 1990s. Last weekend, Spurs-Timberwolves Game 4 averaged 7.90 million in the Sunday night window across Nielsen (3.2 rating, 6.6M viewers) and Adobe Analytics, the top Sunday night audience of the season and second-largest audience of the playoffs, behind Sixers-Celtics Game 7 on NBC following the Kentucky Derby (10.99M). (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.)
Prime is airing a Game 7 Sunday night that would have otherwise belonged to ABC in a window that now belongs to NBC. Can it compare to either?
Through last Monday, the top audience so far on Prime Video was 5.25 million for Spurs-Timberwolves Game 3. (Figures for Friday’s Game 6 doubleheader on Prime will not be out until Tuesday). That is on par with the high-water mark for cable network ESPN thus far, 5.2 million for both Knicks-Sixers Game 2 and Pistons-Cavaliers Game 5. Two weeks from Sunday, ESPN could carry an even more consequential Game 7 — in the Eastern Conference Finals — presumably to fewer complaints.
The comparisons to broadcast television are mixed. Prime’s top audiences this postseason have not been far off of ABC levels, but NBC is a different story — and not just on Sunday nights. The network topped the seven million mark three-straight nights last week, a first in the early rounds of the NBA Playoffs, with 7.90 million for Spurs-Timberwolves last Sunday night, 7.01 million for Pistons-Cavaliers on Monday and 7.04 million for Timberwolves-Spurs on Tuesday.
The Monday night number is particularly notable. It is entirely possible that Sunday’s Game 7 on streaming draws fewer viewers than Game 4 of the same series drew on broadcast less than a week earlier. That Game 4 also happened to air on the same night as another game on Prime Video, nearly doubling the 3.84 million who watched the Thunder sweep the Lakers in what might have been LeBron James’ final game with Los Angeles (and potentially the last of his career).
There is decades of precedent for the NBA sacrificing viewership to put marquee games ‘behind a paywall.’ Every Game 7 on TNT and ESPN, across all rounds of playoffs, would likely have drawn more viewers had it aired on ABC. When TNT carried its first Game 7 in 2003, Kings-Mavericks in the second round, viewership was less-than-half of the previous second round Game 7 on NBC two years earlier.
When leagues moved from broadcast to cable in the early 2000s, the declines in viewership were frankly jarring — it is simply that there was less of a spotlight on sports TV ratings in those days, so few really noticed. With some exceptions, the streaming era has rarely produced those kinds of shockingly low viewership figures.
Some of that can be attributed to Nielsen’s various methodological changes, which make for favorable comparisons to earlier eras of television. But if streaming services were not sufficiently available to serve the majority of sports fans, no amount of methodological changes could hide the impact.
So far, there is no indication and no reason to believe that putting a Game 7 on Prime Video will lower the viewership floor. Looking at recent second round Game 7s, viewership has hovered around the 6-7 million range for most of the past two decades, perking up past the eight million mark on occasion. The last second round Game 7 to crack nine million was Raptors-Sixers on NBC in 2001 (11.17M), and the last to have fewer than six million was Nuggets-Clippers on ESPN in the “bubble” of September 2020 (5.47M). That range is reachable for a platform that has already topped the five million mark on multiple occasions this postseason.
If Game 7 ends up in that general vicinity, it would be hard to describe the performance as being out-of-the-ordinary — even if it were to pale in comparison to what NBC might have drawn in that window. But even ABC is not drawing the kind of numbers that NBC has been this year.
If streaming services are viewed as the equivalent of cable, it is hard to take too seriously the concerns about their acquisition of sports rights. That horse has been out of the barn for a quarter-century.
But if streaming services are viewed as a substitute for broadcast television, the similarities to cable are more of a liability. Cable could occasionally deliver a bigger audience than broadcast under the right circumstances, but it never had as high a ceiling. Leagues were always sacrificing some viewership, even if just at the margins, in putting an event on cable rather than broadcast.
It remains to be seen just how much leagues are sacrificing in moving games to streaming, but perhaps the better question is to figure out why that sacrifice is harder to bear now than it was two decades ago.
Plus: NHL successfully fills ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” vacancy, and more
ESPN’s decision to swap “Sunday Night Baseball” with a package of weeknight midsummer MLB games may go down as one of the shrewder moves in recent sports media history. “Sunday Night Baseball” has proven easy to replace, at least so far, as the Stanley Cup Playoffs in particular is delivering bigger audiences on Sunday nights than baseball was last year.
Last weekend, Sabres-Canadiens Game 3 — a matchup pitting the league’s smallest U.S. market against a Canadian team whose local audience does not count toward U.S. television ratings — delivered a 1.0 rating and 2.12 million viewers on ESPN, followed by Golden Knights-Ducks at a 0.7 and 1.49 million. Both games outdrew last year’s audience of 1.3 million for Phillies-Guardians on “Sunday Night Baseball.”
ESPN’s acquisition of NHL rights in 2021 coincided with a reduction in its MLB coverage, initially by dropping its Monday and Wednesday night games and eventually “Sunday Night Baseball” this past offseason. Now, ESPN gets bigger audiences on those nights in April and May (including NBA playoff games on Wednesdays starting this season), while shifting baseball to the midsummer nights where it has a greater need for live programming. Baseball has more value to ESPN on a Monday or Wednesday night in June than on a Sunday night in May.
The other side of the equation has yet to pay off, as ESPN has aired only three exclusive MLB windows thus far. The network’s May 7 doubleheader Rays-Red Sox and Cardinals-Padres fell short of a typical “Sunday Night Baseball” game with 1.03 and 884,000 viewers respectively. Viewership figures to pick up in the less competitive summer months, when ESPN will at one point carry 23 games in 20 nights.
With no competing NBA Game 7 as in the past few years, the PGA Championship should benefit in the ratings Sunday — particularly as a number of marquee names were in contention to start the day. Any increase would be in keeping with the broader trend this season. CBS was averaging 4.02 million for golf coverage through last weekend, up 12% from last year and the highest average since 2019. That 12% increase is outside the range that one could attribute to Nielsen’s methodological changes, so there is likely real growth.
Last weekend’s Quail Hollow tournament delivered its largest final round audience in 14 years with 3.38 million on CBS (+29%).
With Prime Video getting the only NBA game of the weekend, ABC’s originally-planned Sunday afternoon NBA window will instead go to the NCAA softball regionals. The added broadcast network exposure comes on the heels of a college softball regular season that averaged 292,000 viewers across the ESPN networks — up 78% from last year and the highest since 2009 — and a conference championship slate that included the most-watched SEC final in 11 years (Texas-Alabama: 847K), the most-watched Big 12 title game on record (Arizona State-Texas Tech: 597K) and the most-watched ACC title game on record (Virginia Tech-Florida State: 589K).
All of the usual Nielsen methodological caveats of course apply, but college softball viewership has been trending up since before the days of “Big Data.”
The ABC window figures to continue the momentum, as last year’s most-watched game during the round had just 518,000 viewers (Liberty’s upset of Texas A&M).
