The NBA Cup Final did well enough on Prime Video to edge last year’s edition on ABC.
Tuesday’s Knicks-Spurs NBA Cup Final averaged 3.07 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, up 3% from Bucks-Thunder on ABC last year (2.99M) — an increase that is well within the margin that can be fully explained by Nielsen’s methodological changes this year (specifically its expanded out-of-home viewing sample and shift to “Big Data + Panel” methodology).
But as with Saturday’s semifinals, it is no small feat that viewership on Prime Video was close enough to last year on ABC for methodology to matter. It certainly did not seem like viewership was poised to increase when quarterfinal viewership declined 20 percent.
Continuing a broader trend for Prime Video and streaming platforms generally, viewership increased disproportionately in the key young adult demographics. While Tuesday’s audience was up only three percent overall, it soared 51, 55 and 44 percent respectively among adults 18-34 (630K), 18-49 (1.65M) and 25-54 (1.72M). In all three demos, the game was the most-watched program on all of television.
The Knicks’ win, which peaked with 3.42 million in the 10:45 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the largest Nielsen-measured NBA audience since Opening Night. (The most recent NBC “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” telecast averaged a larger audience of 3.2 million including Adobe Analytics, which tracks NBC’s streaming viewership.)
As might go without saying, the NBA Cup Final was the most-watched game yet on Prime Video, surpassing the network’s previous high of 2.11 million for Knicks-Bucks on Black Friday.
The full NBA Cup knockout round averaged 1.54 million viewers, down 5% from last year. But in keeping with the previously noted trend, viewership increased double-digits in each of the key young demographics, rising 23, 22 and 15 percent respectively in 18-34 (310K), 18-49 (770K) and 25-54 (812K).
The same pattern holds for Prime’s full season average (1.31M), which is down 3% compared to last year’s equivalent windows, but up 13, 20 and 17 percent in the same three demos (262K in 18-34; 652K in 18-49; 695K in 25-54).
The NBA Cup was the first real viewership test for Prime Video in its debut season with the league. Prior to this season, no NBA game had ever aired exclusively on a direct-to-subscriber platform and it was not clear how much of a hit viewership would take relative to linear television. Prime in its first season of “Thursday Night Football” posted a 27 percent decline from the previous year on FOX and NFL Network. Just this past summer, Prime posted a 16% decline for its first season of NASCAR races.
That viewership was able to increase over last year on ABC — even with the Nielsen methodological changes providing a caveat — is a positive indicator for a streamer that holds exclusive rights to the NBA Play-in Tournament and, starting next year, a conference final in every-other-year.
