A potential NBA Finals preview between the Nuggets and Celtics delivered one of the season’s better NBA audiences and topped the Friday sports ratings charts.
Friday’s Nuggets-Celtics NBA regular season game averaged 2.02 million viewers on ESPN, marking the 15th game this season to top the two million viewer mark and just the third to do so outside of Christmas, Opening Week and the In-Season Tournament. Denver has played in four of the 14 most-watched games thus far, tied with the Celtics and behind only the Lakers as the most of any team.
The Nuggets’ win increased 64% from Heat-Mavericks on the same January night last year (1.23M). (Versus Warriors-Spurs on the equivalent date of last season — January 13 — viewership increased 48% from 1.36 million.)
In the nightcap, Nets-Lakers averaged 1.17 million — down 30% from Grizzlies-Lakers last year (1.66M). (Compared to Nuggets-Clippers on the equivalent date last season, viewership increased 5% from 1.11 million.) Brooklyn’s win was a late addition to the schedule due to the postponement of Mavericks-Warriors. ESPN’s coverage was blacked out in the home markets.
The two NBA games were the most-watched sporting events of the day. Topping the non-NBA slate, an Indiana-Wisconsin men’s college basketball game on FS1 averaged 465,000 — several times higher than the Villanova-Creighton women’s game in the same window last year (61K). The Georgetown-Xavier lead-in had 255,000, up 8% from Villanova-St. John’s last year (237K), and UNLV-Colorado State closed out the night with 149,000 (+30%).
In other college action, Saint Louis-VCU drew 127,000 on ESPN2 — down from VCU-Richmond last year (150K).
Over on BTN, Purdue-Iowa led a college wrestling tripleheader with 226,000 viewers, preceded by Penn State-Michigan at 216,000 — the second and third-largest wrestling audiences of the season. ESPN averaged 243,000 for an Iowa-Iowa State meet in November. Rounding out the tripleheader, Nebraska-Minnesota averaged just 111,000.
Elsewhere, second round coverage of the PGA Tour American Express averaged 277,000 — down 9% from last year’s 305,000. Football’s Polynesian Bowl chipped in 114,000 on NFL Network, up slightly from last year’s 111,000.
Friday, January 19 sports ratings
Updated chart:
Original chart below:
