The NBA held its own versus a weak Thursday Night Football game, but the NFL won the ratings battle yet again.
Thursday’s Lakers-Nuggets NBA Western Conference Finals Game 4 averaged 4.60 million viewers on TNT, easily the league’s largest audience in five head-to-head matchups against the NFL this postseason. Viewership fell just 5% from Game 3 on Tuesday night, which faced no NFL competition (4.83M).
The Lakers’ narrow win was outdrawn by the competing Dolphins-Jaguars Thursday Night Football game on NFL Network (5.43M), but the NFL’s 18% advantage was much smaller than the previous week — when Bengals-Browns (6.68M) nearly doubled Heat-Celtics Game 2 (3.48M).
After Sunday Night Football sank the NBA to a 17-year conference final low on Sunday, it was the NFL that hit a viewership low this time around. Dolphins-Jaguars averaged the league’s smallest primetime audience in four years, since a Saturday night Jets-Dolphins game on NFL Network in Week 15 of the 2016 season (4.39M).
The NFL still held up better relative to previous years than did the NBA. Dolphins-Jaguars declined 14% from Titans-Jaguars in Week 3 of last season (6.31M), while Lakers-Nuggets fell 41% from last year’s comparable Warriors-Blazers Game 4 (7.79M). Keep in mind last year’s NBA game took place in May.
Thursday’s games finished in a virtual tie among adults 18-49 (1.90 for the NFL and 1.87 for the NBA). The NBA came out ahead in adults 18-34 (1.6 to 1.3) and the NFL in adults 25-54 (2.3 to 2.0).
Notably, TNT’s hour-long Inside the NBA postgame show (1.78M) beat both the 20-minute Thursday Night Football postgame (1.64M) and half-hour NFL Total Access that followed (959K). TNT’s hour-long pregame show (986K) also outdrew the half-hour NFL Network pregame (947K), though the latter does not include 20 minutes or so of “pre-kick” coverage (2.46M).
As should surprise no one, ESPN’s competing UAB-South Alabama college football game was not a factor, averaging just 497,000 viewers.
[Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 9.25]
