The NBA In-Season Tournament knockout round comfortably topped the sports viewership charts on Tuesday, December 5.
Tuesday’s Suns-Lakers NBA In-Season Tournament quarterfinal averaged 1.97 million viewers on TNT, up 90% from Clippers-Trail Blazers last year (1.04M) and the second-largest audience of the In-Season Tournament thus far. Warriors-Kings the prior Tuesday holds the top spot with 2.00 million. The Knicks-Bucks lead-in averaged 1.74 million, up 16% from Warriors-Mavericks a year ago (1.51M).
The full doubleheader averaged 1.85 million, trailing only ESPN’s Thanksgiving Eve doubleheader (2.01M) as the most-watched night of the NBA season since Opening Week.
The In-Season Tournament games ranked as the most-watched sporting events of the day. Placing third, North Carolina-UConn averaged 1.21 million in college basketball’s annual Jimmy V Classic — up 37% from Iowa-Duke last year (887K). The Florida Atlantic-Illinois lead-in averaged 768,000, down 25% from Illinois-Texas a year ago (1.02M). The full doubleheader averaged 994,000 (+3%).
In other college basketball action, ESPN2 averaged 248,000 viewers for a doubleheader of Villanova-Kansas State (328K) and Seton Hall-Baylor (154K) — down 19% from 305,000 for last year’s equivalent matchups (Maryland-Wisconsin: 439K; Georgia-Georgia Tech: 174K).
Over on truTV, the United States women’s soccer team match against China averaged 171,000 viewers. Spanish-language coverage on Universo added 22,000. In the Premier League, Burnley-Wolves chipped in 128,000 on USA Network.
Not making the chart was the MLB Draft Lottery on MLB Network, which averaged 65,000 viewers. That is on par with an episode of the NHL studio show “The Point” on ESPN2 around the same time (64K).
Tuesday, December 5 sports viewership
