After a strong start on Opening Night, the second night of the NBA season delivered big gains of its own on ESPN.
ESPN averaged 2.33 million viewers for its first NBA doubleheader of the season on Wednesday night, up 44% from last year and behind only 2012 and 2023 as the network’s most-watched season opening doubleheader. While Nielsen this year expanded its out-of-home viewing sample and shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” methodology, those changes would not fully explain an increase of that size.
In particular, Spurs-Mavericks averaged 2.49 million — up 63% from Suns-Clippers last year (1.53M), but down 17% from the same all-Texas matchup two years ago (2.99M). This year’s matchup marked the NBA debut of Mavericks F Cooper Flagg, while the 2023 game marked the debut of Spurs C Victor Wembanyama.
The Spurs’ win, which peaked with 2.86 million viewers, ranks as ESPN’s third-most watched Opening Week game in a decade — behind the aforementioned 2023 Mavericks-Spurs game and the Celtics-Knicks game that led into it (2.55M). (That excludes 2021, when Opening Week coincided with Christmas.) Keep in mind that all prior year figures are Nielsen panel-only and contain less out of home viewing (if any at all).
Earlier in the night, Cavaliers-Knicks drew 2.17 million — up 26% from Bucks-Sixers last year (1.71M).
Following the games, the ESPN premiere of the TNT-produced “Inside the NBA” averaged 1.0 million viewers — up 13% from last year’s Opening Night edition on TNT, and the show’s largest regular season audience since the night LeBron James set the all-time NBA scoring record in February 2023 (1.2M). As that 2023 episode featured TNT’s alternate Tuesday night cast, it was the most-watched to feature the usual quartet of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal since the opening of the 2022-23 season.
The Wednesday night gains followed multi-year highs for Tuesday’s NBA Opening Night on NBC and Peacock.
