The finale of the NBA In-Season Tournament delivered the league’s top audience outside of Christmas and the postseason in more than five years.
Saturday’s Pacers-Lakers NBA In-Season Tournament final averaged a 2.5 rating and 4.58 million viewers across ABC (2.2, 4.14M) and ESPN2 (0.26, 439K), marking the largest NBA audience outside of Christmas and the postseason since February 2018 (Cavaliers-Celtics: 4.64M).
The Lakers’ win, which peaked with 5.68 million viewers, increased 44% in ratings and 46% in viewership from a Celtics-Warriors NBA Finals rematch in the same window last season (1.7, 3.14M). Even excluding the ESPN2 simulcast, the ABC-only figures increased 29% and 32% respectively.
The NBA dominated the competing Heisman Trophy Presentation on ESPN head-to-head (2.31M), though it was no match for the Army-Navy Game on CBS earlier in the day (7.18M). (As is typical for the younger-skewing NBA, it did outperform Army-Navy in the younger demographics of adults 18-34 and 18-49.)
Locally, the game averaged a 9.5 rating in Indianapolis — the highest on record for a Pacers regular season game (dates back to 2002), and the team’s highest overall since their Game 7 loss to the Cavaliers in the 2018 playoffs (21.6) — and a 4.5 in Los Angeles.
The complete In-Season Tournament averaged 1.67 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and TNT (1.56M including a pair of games on NBA TV), up 41% from last year’s equivalent windows (1.18M).* That actually trails the non-tournament average (1.77M), though that is primarily due to Opening Week. Excluding Opening Week, the IST average exceeds the rest of the regular season (1.46M). The non-IST average took a hit Friday as ESPN averaged a season-low 703,000 for Clippers-Jazz.
Overall, NBA games this season are averaging 1.72 million viewers — up 7% from the same point of last season (1.61M).*
(* Comparisons for TNT and ESPN are to the equivalent weeks of last season, which began a week earlier on the calendar. The ABC comparison is to the equivalent date last season, as the network had not carried any games through the same week last year.)
