The second season of the new NBA media rights deal is thus far off to an even better start than the first.
NBA regular season windows were averaging 2.92 million viewers across the league’s primary broadcast partners NBCUniversal, ESPN and Prime Video through the second week of play, up 25% from last year and the highest average at this point of a season on record, excluding the two delayed seasons that began in Christmas week (2011-12 and 2020-21).
Including NBA TV, this year’s average is the highest since the league-owned network launched in 2003. Keep in mind NBA TV was not Nielsen rated until 2010.
(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.)
The second week of play averaged 2.35 million, up 52% from a year ago. Note that last year’s second week faced more World Series competition.
Prime Video is up 101% to start the season, averaging 2.38 million viewers through four games, up from 961,000 a year ago. The streamer opened the season with its most-watched regular season doubleheader (2.14M) and then surpassed that mark last week, averaging 2.62 million this past Friday night — up 143% from the equivalent night last year (1.08M), when coverage faced Game 6 of the World Series.
In particular, Lakers-Warriors averaged a 1.3 and 2.67 million and Knicks-Sixers a 1.2 and 2.58 million, ranking as the two most-watched regular season games on Prime. (Last year’s NBA Cup Final, which technically is not a regular season game, averaged 3.07 million on Prime.) Viewership increased 123 and 168 percent respectively from last year’s games (Lakers-Grizzlies: 1.2M; Celtics-Sixers: 961K).
NBC is averaging 4.76 million so far this season across a Nielsen-measured linear audience (3.575M) and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics (1.19M), on par with last year — but that includes a weekday afternoon Opening Day game that was not carried last season. Excluding that game, NBC is averaging 5.5 million, up 15%.
The Oct. 27 season premiere of NBC’s “Coast to Coast Tuesday” — Pistons-Knicks in most markets and Blazers-Lakers on the West Coast — averaged a combined 3.7 million across Nielsen-measured (1.3 rating, 2.29M viewers) and Adobe Analytics, marking the largest audience yet for the Tuesday night regional package. The previous high was 3.6 million for Celtics-Spurs or Timberwolves-Lakers back in March.
Viewership increased 23% from 3.0 million for last year’s debut of “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” (Knicks-Bucks or Clippers-Warriors).
ESPN the following night averaged a 0.7 and 1.44 million for Sixers-Pacers, up from 1.28 million for Cavaliers-Celtics last year, and a 0.6 and 1.14 million for Thunder-Mavericks — down from 1.36 million for Lakers-Timberwolves. The network is averaging 1.99 million through the first two weeks (six games), up 5%.
