ABC’s new primetime NBA series got off to a decent enough start.
Saturday’s Bulls/Cavaliers NBA regular season game, which marked the debut of ABC’s NBA Saturday Primetime, earned a 2.4 final rating and 3.9 million viewers. Excluding Christmas Day, the Bulls’ win ranks as the most-watched game of the season on any network — ahead of 3.6 million for Warriors/Cavaliers earlier in the week.
One has to go back 16 years to find the last regular season NBA games on primetime network TV (again excluding Christmas). In 2000, NBC drew a 2.8 rating for a Spurs/Lakers game in April, a 2.4 for regional coverage later that same month, and a 2.7 for another regional window in December — all on Saturday nights.
For a more recent comparison, only three of last year’s 13 Sunday afternoon windows on ABC scored a higher rating and viewership — Thunder/Cavaliers in January (2.8, 4.2M), Cavaliers/Rockets in March (2.8, 4.3M) and Bulls/Cavaliers in April (2.8, 4.3M).
Compared to other sports, Bulls/Cavaliers delivered a larger audience than any primetime edition of MLB on FOX since May 2011 (excluding postseason) and any primetime mixed martial arts event on broadcast since January 2013. It was of course no match for ABC’s Saturday Night Football, which pulled larger numbers ten times in fourteen tries last year.
Head-to-head, the game barely edged U.S. Figure Skating Championships coverage on NBC (2.3, 3.7M) but easily topped the Premier Boxing Champions on FOX (1.5, 2.5M). Among adults 18-49, the NBA’s 1.5 rating crushed both the PBC (0.8) and figure skating (0.6).
(Sat. numbers from ESPN, with additional info via Programming Insider)
