The new NBA media rights deal paid early dividends in the Opening Week of the season.
The NBA’s Opening Week games averaged 2.8 million viewers across NBC Sports, ESPN and Amazon Prime Video, per Nielsen (and Adobe Analytics for NBC games) — up 60% from last year and the highest average for a traditional Opening Week since 2017. (Opening Week coincided with Christmas in 2020.)
While Nielsen has in the past year expanded its out-of-home viewing sample and shifted to a new methodology that adds “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes to its traditional panel, those changes would not account for an increase of such size.
As previously noted, NBC and Peacock averaged a combined 5.6 million viewers for NBA Opening Night, the highest average since 2010 (excluding 2011, when the season opened on Christmas). Viewership increased 90% from last year’s Opening Night, with the caveat that NBC’s figures are combined across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, while all prior year figures are Nielsen-only.
ESPN averaged 2.2 million for its two nights of coverage, trailing only two years ago as its most-watched Opening Week since 2014. The network averaged 2.33 million for its season-opening doubleheader last Wednesday and 2.07 million the following night, up 44 and 53 percent respectively from last year’s equivalent doubleheaders on ESPN and TNT.
Newly reported Wednesday were the results for Amazon’s debut NBA telecasts. Friday’s doubleheader of Knicks-Celtics and Timberwolves-Lakers averaged 1.25 million viewers on Prime Video, up 13% from last year’s equivalent doubleheader on ESPN.
In particular, Celtics-Knicks averaged 1.17 million viewers — up 41% from Pacers-Knicks last year, when the New York market was otherwise occupied by a Yankees World Series game (830K). The Timberwolves-Lakers nightcap averaged 1.32 million, actually down 4% from Suns-Lakers a year ago (1.37M). Both this year and last, coverage had to compete with a Dodgers World Series game.
The Friday doubleheader marked the first NBA games to ever air exclusively on a streaming service. As has been the case for previous streaming exclusives, particularly on Prime Video, the games skewed younger than games on linear television. Prime Video had a median age of 45.6, compared to 53.3 for games on NBC and ESPN. (Though as NBC streaming viewership is tracked by Adobe Analytics, it is likely that the network’s young audiences are not fully accounted for in its linear Nielsen figures).
One notable difference from Prime Video’s NFL and NASCAR audiences is that viewership was actually up more among older than younger viewers. Viewership increased 9% among adults under 35 (from 248K to 271K), 21% among adults under 50 (from 543K to 659K) and 26% in adults 25-54 (from 553K to 696K).
In addition to the games itself, Prime Video averaged 724,000 for its “NBA Nightcap” postgame show — retaining 55% of its lead-in audience. That compares to a 43% retention for Prime’s NASCAR postrace shows.
As for the other streaming-exclusive NBA games, NBA games on Peacock are being measured by Nielsen for internal use only and the plan is for viewership to be shared only when circumstances warrant, akin to the approach on Peacock-exclusive properties like the Premier League.
Viewership for the debut of NBC’s regional “Coast to Coast Tuesday” will not be available until Thursday, in keeping with the new Nielsen release schedule. As those are not true doubleheaders, but instead a regionalized split where most markets will get only one game on the NBC broadcast network, there will be a single viewership figure combining the East Coast and West Coast audiences.
