Moving from cable to broadcast, the NBA’s Martin Luther King Day games saw an expected lift over last year.
Monday’s Mavericks-Knicks and Thunder-Cavaliers NBA regular season games averaged 2.2 and 1.8 million viewers respectively on NBC across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics — up from a Nielsen-only 1.3 million and 671,000 for last year’s equivalent TNT windows (Celtics-Warriors and Timberwolves-Grizzlies).
The games delivered the league’s two largest afternoon audiences on Martin Luther King Day (records date back to 1992). The Celtics-Pistons nightcap, which faced stiff competition from the College Football Playoff National Championship, also had 1.8 million.
As is usually the case in the current era of measurement, the numbers come with some caveats. To begin with, TNT delivered larger audiences for its primetime MLK Day games — including as much as 4.7 million for Cavaliers-Warriors in 2017. The NBA stopped scheduling primetime TNT games on MLK Day in 2022, when the NFL began playing playoff games on the night, but prior to that point most of its games on the holiday aired in primetime.
In addition, NBC differs from the other networks in using a separate company (Adobe Analytics) to measure its streaming viewership. The network’s position is that because Nielsen does not track its streaming audience, its combined Nielsen + Adobe figures are comparable to the Nielsen-only numbers of other networks.
Finally, there is the usual caveat regarding changes in Nielsen methodology — including its inclusion and expansion of out-of-home viewing in its estimates and its September shift to a new currency that combines “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel.
In other recent NBA action, the January 13 edition of NBC’s “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” — featuring Spurs-Thunder in most markets and Blazers-Warriors on the West Coast — averaged a Nielsen-estimated 1.2 rating and 2.04 million viewers, with the latter figure rising to 2.8 million including Adobe Analytics. In a rarity for the NBA this time of year, that was the largest non-NFL sports audience of the week ending January 18.
As for the other networks, ESPN drew a 0.6 and 1.20 million for Cavaliers-Sixers and a 0.6 and 1.06 million for Nuggets-Mavericks on January 14 — off slightly from last year’s pairing of Knicks-Sixers (1.22M) and Warriors-Timberwolves (1.15M). The following night on Prime Video, Thunder-Rockets drew a 0.6 and 982,000 (-21%) and Knicks-Warriors a 0.7 and 1.27 million (+50%). Last Friday on ESPN, Cavaliers-Sixers drew a 0.6 and 1.25 million (+8%) and Timberwolves-Rockets a 0.8 and 1.53 million (+36%).
NBA games are now averaging 1.92 million viewers across NBCUniversal, ESPN/ABC and Prime Video, up 19% from the same point last year. The league has seen a much larger increase in total reach, which is up 91% to 123 million. The massive difference could indicate that many more viewers are sampling NBA games over a shorter period of time than a year ago; it could also be related to the same methodological changes outlined previously.
