Thursday Night Football turned in another dominant performance, while the NBA In-Season Tournament delivered the league’s largest audience since Opening Week, on December 7.
The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video (Patriots-Steelers) averaged 10.71 million viewers, up 30% from Raiders-Rams last year (8.26M) and easily the most-watched sporting event of Thursday, December 7. All 12 Thursday night games on Amazon Prime this season have posted a double-digit increase in viewership. Additional details on that game are available here.
Thursday’s Pelicans-Lakers NBA In-Season Tournament semifinal averaged a combined 2.17 million viewers across TNT (1.74M), TBS (375K) and a betting-themed alternate presentation on truTV (58K) — marking the largest NBA audience since the opening week of the season. The Lakers’ 44-point win ranks as the sixth-most watched game of the season overall, with In-Season Tournament games accounting for four of the top twelve.
Earlier in the day, the Pacers-Bucks semifinal on ESPN averaged 1.60 million despite a 5 PM ET start time.
The NBA game led into an NHL doubleheader on ESPN that averaged 371,000 viewers. In particular, Stars-Capitals averaged 470,000 and Devils-Kraken 255,000. There were no comparable games last year.
Elsewhere on the ESPN networks, the regional semifinals of the NCAA women’s volleyball tournament averaged 171,000 viewers across ESPN2 and ESPNU. The ESPN2 games averaged 253,000, topping out at 297,000 for Penn State-Wisconsin.
Thursday, December 7 sports viewership
