The baseball competition was tougher than usual, but a nine-year low is surely not what was expected of NBA Opening Night.
Tuesday’s NBA Opening Night doubleheader on TNT averaged 2.78 million viewers, marking the least-watched Opening Night slate in nine years (2014: 2.36M) and second-least watched in 15 (2008: 2.58M). Viewership declined 16% from last year (3.30M).
In particular, Lakers-Nuggets averaged 2.84 million viewers and Suns-Warriors 2.71 million, down 5 and 24 percent respectively from last year’s games (Sixers-Celtics: 2.98M; Lakers-Warriors: 3.55M).
Lakers-Nuggets was LeBron James’ least-watched season opener since 2008 (Cavaliers-Celtics: 2.61M) and Suns-Warriors was Stephen Curry’s least-watched since 2019 (Clippers-Warriors: 2.26M).
The Opening Night games were trounced head-to-head by Game 7 of the Diamondbacks-Phillies National League Championship Series on TBS and truTV (8.99M) — the strongest baseball competition on Opening Night since 2019, when Game 1 of the World Series averaged 12.19 million. Yet the Opening Night slate was still higher that year, averaging 2.85 million.
Opening Night also held up better versus World Series games in 2014, 2015 and 2016 — even averaging 3.21 million opposite Game 1 of the highly-rated 2016 Cubs-Indians series (19.34M).
(Keep in mind that the NLCS competition would likely have had a disproportionate impact in Phoenix, where the Diamondbacks no doubt took precedence over the Suns locally.)
TNT’s “Inside the NBA” averaged just 939,000 viewers following Suns-Warriors, down 27% from last year’s Opening Night edition (1.29M). Pregame coverage averaged 667,000, actually up 59% from last year (420K), with the caveat that TNT came on the air an hour-earlier last year.
(Nielsen estimates from Sports TV Ratings 10.25).
