The NBA posted steep declines for a pair of lopsided second round openers, but still topped the day in sports viewing for Tuesday, May 7.
Tuesday’s Mavericks-Thunder second round NBA playoff Game 1 averaged 3.68 million viewers across TNT (3.22M) and truTV (456K), down a whopping 50% from Lakers-Warriors Game 1 last year (7.36M). Cavaliers-Celtics Game 1 led in with 3.51 million (TNT: 2.95M; truTV: 567K), down 25% from last year’s Heat-Knicks Game 2 (4.71M). Despite the steep declines, the games were still the most-watched sportscasts of the day.
It was a foregone conclusion that the NBA would suffer steep declines from last year’s marquee pairing of LeBron James’ Lakers and Stephen Curry’s Warriors — the most-watched second round NBA playoff series since 1996 (with out-of-home viewing providing a caveat). Even so, Tuesday’s numbers were soft by just about any measure, trailing all-but-one second round game from the past two seasons. (Sixers-Heat Game 2 in 2022 averaged 3.43 million).
The NBA Playoffs is now averaging 3.26 million viewers through Tuesday, down 11% from the same point last year (3.64M).
Shifting to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Rangers’ double-overtime Game 2 win over the Hurricanes averaged 1.93 million on ESPN — up 47% from Panthers-Maple Leafs last year (1.31M). The ESPN portion of the subsequent Avalanche-Stars Game 1 averaged 1.14 million, down from Kraken-Stars at 1.41 million a year ago.
With Hurricanes-Rangers running long on ESPN and a Louisville-Vanderbilt baseball game occupying ESPN2, Avalanche-Stars aired exclusively on ESPNU for a half-hour. ESPN2 joined in after the baseball game and the two networks shared coverage for an additional hour-plus before the game began airing on ESPN. At one point, all three networks aired coverage simultaneously.
The Louisville-Vanderbilt game that took precedence over Avalanche-Stars averaged just 56,000 viewers on ESPN2. Avalanche-Stars averaged a larger audience on ESPNU (72K) and added 235,000 once it began airing on ESPN2.
The NHL Draft Lottery led into the action with 453,000, down 31% from last year — when Connor Bedard was the expected #1 pick (658K).
Further down the dial, TBS averaged 241,000 for an Astros-Yankees Major League Baseball game, up slightly from Red Sox-Braves on the same night last year (234K). The TUDN portion of the Paris St. Germain-Borussia Dortmund UEFA Champions League semifinal averaged 104,000, with figures for the Univision telecast not yet available. (English language coverage aired on Paramount+, for which no Nielsen figures are available.)
Tuesday, May 7 sports ratings
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