The NBA maintained its strong Opening Week pace in week two of the season.
NBA games were averaging 2.33 million viewers across NBCUniversal, ESPN and Prime Video through the second week of the season, up 61% from last year. That is actually a slight increase over the Opening Week margin of 60%. (Update 11/6: Including NBA TV, NBA games were averaging 1.86 million through this past Tuesday — the start of week three — up 97% from last year.)
The premiere of NBC’s “Coast to Coast Tuesdays” led the week two slate with a Nielsen-estimated 1.2 rating and 2.14 million viewers for coverage that featured Knicks-Bucks in most markets and Clippers-Warriors on the West Coast. Adding in an Adobe Analytics-measured streaming audience of 878,000 viewers, the telecast averaged 3.01 million — the league’s largest Tuesday audience prior to Christmas since 1996, excluding Opening Night.
That superlative comes with multiple caveats. Beyond Nielsen’s methodological changes — which include the February expansion of out-of-home viewing and September shift to “Big Data + Panel” — it is also the case that NBC is the only major broadcaster regularly combining its viewership across multiple measurement companies.
In addition, the regional “Coast to Coast” format allows for a single viewership figure that combines both games, rather than the separate, single-game figures that were reported in past years. That is far from unprecedented — the NFL singleheader window is no different — but it is a departure for the NBA.
Finally, it is worth noting that prior to this year, the NBA has never had a regular weeknight window on broadcast television. As one might imagine given all of those caveats, viewership about tripled last year’s Nielsen-only, panel-only, two-game average on cable network TNT (1.1M).
In other week two action, last week’s Wednesday night doubleheader on ESPN averaged 1.32 million viewers — up 47% from the same night last year. Lakers-Timberwolves averaged 1.36 million and Cavaliers-Celtics 1.28 million, up 85 and 27 percent respectively from last year’s pairing of Spurs-Thunder and Celtics-Pacers. Both this year and last, coverage faced Game 5 of the World Series.
Finally, Prime Video averaged 1.08 million for its Friday night doubleheader, down 7% from 1.16 million on ESPN last year. This year’s doubleheader faced Game 6 of the World Series, and there was no such competition last year.
In particular, Lakers-Grizzlies drew 1.2 million and Celtics-Sixers 961,000 — the former down 14% from Nuggets-Timberwolves last year (1.4M) but the latter up 5% from last year’s Magic-Cavaliers game (912K).
Notably, Lakers-Grizzlies was the most-watched week two NBA game in adults 18-34. That marked a shift from the opening week, when NBC took top honors in that demo.
Prime Video again retained a significant portion of its audience for its postgame show, with “NBA Nightcap” averaging 732,000 — retaining 61% of its lead-in audience, up from 53% in week one. “Nightcap” was also the week’s most-watched NBA postgame show in 18-34, surpassing the TNT-produced “Inside the NBA” on ESPN.
