Now airing exclusively on streaming service Prime Video, NBA Play-in Tournament viewership is nonetheless trending ahead of last year on cable.
The first two nights of the NBA Play-in Tournament averaged 2.69 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, up 12% from last year’s comparable windows on TNT and ESPN. As is typical for sporting events on streaming services, viewership is up even more among younger viewers, rising 32, 31 and 26 percent respectively in the key adult demographics of 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54.
Note that between this year and last, Nielsen shifted to a new methodology combining its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and select providers’ first-party data (including Amazon). Those changes have generally benefited sports viewership, though perhaps not enough to fully explain a 12% increase.
Wednesday’s Warriors-Clippers game was the most-watched of the Play-in Tournament thus far with 3.15 million viewers, up 47% from Mavericks-Kings on ESPN last year (2.14M). Golden State’s comeback win, which peaked with 3.51 million, surpassed the Knicks-Spurs NBA Cup Final in December (3.07M) to rank as the most-watched game on Prime Video thus far.
The Warriors drew larger audiences in their previous play-in appearances, including 3.4 million last year against the Grizzlies and 4.05 million two years ago against the Kings — to say nothing of their 2021 game against the Lakers, a postseason pairing of Stephen Curry and LeBron James (5.62M).
Earlier in the night, Magic-Sixers averaged 2.66 million — up 28% from Heat-Bulls last year (2.07M). The full Wednesday doubleheader averaged 2.91 million, up 38% from a year ago.
On Tuesday night, Heat-Hornets averaged 2.58 million — up 41% from Hawks-Magic last year (1.8M). The Trail Blazers-Suns nightcap was the least-watched of the four games and the only one to decline, as its audience of 2.37 million fell 30% from the aforementioned Grizzlies-Warriors game. The Tuesday doubleheader averaged 2.48 million, down 7%.
The Play-in Tournament numbers are a positive sign coming off of a regular season that saw Prime Video (1.0M) lag behind broadcast networks NBC (2.8M, including Adobe Analytics), ABC (2.3M) and cable network ESPN (1.4M).
Prime Video did not have appointment programming akin to NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” or ABC’s “NBA Saturday Primetime,” nor was it a part of the league’s holiday dates like Christmas and Martin Luther King Day. Prior to the Play-in Tournament, the highest-profile event on the Prime schedule was the NBA Cup knockout round — which with an average of 1.54 million declined 5% from last year.
Notably, while the knockout round was down overall, the NBA Cup semifinals and finals both increased from last year on linear TV — increasing 14 and 3 percent respectively, despite two of the three year-ago windows having aired on ABC. (Note that the aforementioned Nielsen changes are almost certainly the reason why viewership increased over last year’s ABC games.)
Between that performance and this past week’s Play-in viewership, indications are that Prime Video is capable of generating linear-level audiences for its biggest events. That is no small matter at a time of increasing federal scrutiny toward sports leagues for selling their media rights to streaming services.
