The NBA opened the second season of its media rights deal with a new Opening Week viewership high.
NBA opening week games averaged 3.24 million viewers across NBCUniversal, ESPN and Amazon Prime Video, up 15% from last year (2.81M) and the highest average since 2012, excluding the COVID-delayed 2020-21 season that began during Christmas week. Excluding the matinee game on the opening day of the season (Celtics-Pistons), the games averaged 3.33 million (+19%).
As previously noted, NBC averaged 5.1 million viewers for its Opening Night tripleheader — and 6.4 million for the primetime games — across a Nielsen-measured linear audience and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics. Sixers-Knicks topped the charts with 7.71 million across Nielsen (3.0 rating, 5.98M viewers) and Adobe (1.7M), officially the largest Opening Night audience on record, excluding the lockout-delayed 2011-12 season that began on Christmas.
Note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025, that this is only in the second year of a new Nielsen methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel, and that Nielsen has recently tweaked its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games.
NBC also averaged 4.85 million for Thunder-Spurs (2.1, 3.89M per Nielsen; 959K per Adobe) and 2.52 million for Celtics-Pistons (1.1, 1.98M per Nielsen; 534K per Adobe).
ESPN averaged 2.3 million for its Opening Week games, up 6% from last year and its most-watched start to the season since 2014. The network topped out at a 1.2 rating and 2.52 million viewers for Timberwolves-Heat last Wednesday night, flat in ratings and up 16% in viewership from Cavaliers-Knicks last year (1.2, 2.17M).
The Warriors-Lakers nightcap had a 1.2 and 2.46 million, down 14% and 1% respectively from Mavericks-Spurs last year (1.4, 2.49M).
Last Thursday, ESPN averaged a 1.2 and 2.49 million for Cavaliers-Sixers — LeBron James’ Sixers home debut — up a tick and 26% respectively from last year (Thunder-Pacers: 1.1, 1.975M), and the most-watched game on the opening Thursday of the season since James’ Lakers debut in 2018.
Nuggets-Thunder followed with a 1.0 and 1.81 million, down 17% and 19% respectively from Nuggets-Warriors a year ago (1.2, 2.23M).
Prime Video opened its season with an average of 2.14 million for its doubleheader last Friday night, up 66% from last year (1.29M) and its most-watched regular season doubleheader in any week thus far.
Both Knicks-Celtics and Rockets-Spurs averaged a 1.0 rating and 2.14 million viewers, with viewership up 83 and 53 percent respectively from last year’s equivalent games (Celtics-Knicks: 1.17M; Timberwolves-Lakers: 1.40M).
As usual, the median audience for Prime (44.4) was considerably lower than for the league’s linear partners (52.6M). (As NBC is still using Adobe Analytics to measure its streaming viewership for NBA games, the company’s younger-skewing Peacock audiences are not factored into its Nielsen-reported data.)
The year-old NBA media rights deal is a rarity in sports television, as the league was able to both markedly increase its rights fees and reach. Most leagues have to sacrifice one to boost the other. With the addition of a third Opening Night game on broadcast television, this year’s Opening Week had a bigger increase in reach (+33%) than average minute audience.
