The restart of the NBA season opened on a solid note in the ratings.
Thursday’s Clippers-Lakers NBA regular season game averaged a 2.1 rating and 3.35 million viewers on TNT, marking the ninth-largest audience of the protracted season. Six of the top nine have been Laker games, including all four of the team’s matchups with the Clippers.
The Lakers’ narrow win, which peaked with 4.1 million from 9:45-10 PM ET, was the most-watched game on TNT since the same matchup on Opening Night back in October (3.58M) and the most-watched on cable since Blazers-Lakers on ESPN January 31, the first Laker game after the passing of Kobe Bryant (4.41M).
Overall, it was the most-watched NBA game in just four days of game play — since Lakers-Clippers on ABC March 8, three days before the league suspended its season (3.62M).
Compared to other sports’ returns from hiatus, Clippers-Lakers was no match for the previous week’s Yankees-Nationals Major League Baseball opener on ESPN (4.01M) or NASCAR’s return at Darlington on FOX back in May (6.32M). It did top the final round of the PGA Tour’s first event back in June (3.09M).
Earlier in the night, Jazz-Pelicans averaged a 1.3 and 2.11 million — the most-watched NBA game not involving the Lakers since Rockets-Celtics on ABC in February (2.35M).
New Orleans’ narrow loss ranks seventh out of the team’s 24 national TV appearances this season. The Pelicans played in the NBA’s traditional Opening Night game back in October and that game — against the Raptors, sans Zion Williamson and opposite the World Series — averaged 2.25 million.
The NBA dominated the night on television in the key adult demographics, with Clippers-Lakers taking top honors in adults 18-49 (1.6) and 18-34 (1.55) and Jazz-Pelicans ranking second (0.95; 0.98).
Clippers-Lakers ranks as the highest rated television program in adults 18-49 and 18-34 since the season finale of “The Masked Singer” on FOX in May (2.3; 1.6).
The postgame “Inside the NBA” averaged 1.3 million, the largest audience for the show since the start of the 2018-19 season.
[Nielsen estimates from Turner Sports, Programming Insider 7.31, ShowBuzz Daily 7.31]
