ESPN’s “Marvel”-themed NBA coverage was no match for the traditional broadcast, but pulled decent numbers by the standards of an alternate presentation.
Monday’s Warriors-Pelicans NBA regular season game averaged a combined 1.39 million viewers across ESPN and ESPN2, with the traditional ESPN broadcast (1.12M) topping the “Marvel”-themed ESPN2 simulcast (274K) by more than 300 percent. Keep in mind that the “Marvel” simulcast also aired on ESPN+, which is not measured by Nielsen.
That the traditional broadcast outperformed the alternate presentation is not necessarily unusual. ESPN’s “Statcast” Major League Baseball broadcasts, which are acclaimed on social media, often draw just a fraction of the audience of the traditional broadcast.
The “Marvel” simulcast outdrew the most recent “Statcast” presentation of Padres-Dodgers April 25, which averaged 202,000 viewers. At 20% of the total audience, the “Marvel” simulcast also accounted for a larger percentage of the audience than that April 25 “Statcast” game (10% of the total audience of 2.01 million). It also comfortably topped ESPN’s “Watch Party” presentation of a Ravens-Titans NFL playoff game on January, which scored just 67,000 viewers on Freeform (0.3% of the total audience of 24.82 million).
ESPN previously aired an alternate, gambling-focused presentation of a Nets-Sixers NBA game on ESPN2 last month. That alternate presentation did not do well enough to crack the publicly-available ratings charts on ShowBuzz Daily.
The king of the alternate presentation genre, at least in the ratings, was Nickelodeon’s presentation of a Bears-Saints Wild Card game in January. That alternate broadcast, which ESPN’s “Marvel” presentation clearly seemed to be influenced by, averaged 2.06 million (7% of the total audience of 30.6 million).
In other NBA action, Monday’s Nuggets-Lakers nightcap averaged 1.10 million on ESPN alone. Ratings for Monday’s games were not immediately available. ESPN also drew a 0.6 rating and 1.08 million for Warriors-Rockets and a 0.6 and 986,000 for Nuggets-Clippers on Saturday night. Going back to last Wednesday, the network pulled a 0.6 and 920,000 for Lakers-Wizards — the least-watched Laker game on ESPN, ABC or TNT since LeBron James joined the roster in 2018 — and a 0.6 and 892,000 for Clippers-Suns.
ABC’s regular season finale of Nets-Bucks pulled a 1.0 and 1.65 million Sunday afternoon, up a third and 42% respectively from the network’s season finale last year — Spurs-Pelicans in the NBA’s Disney “bubble” in August (0.8, 1.16M). It was nonetheless the network’s least-watched game this season, falling below the previous mark set by Clippers-Bucks in February (1.68M).
