NBA playoff viewership is up more than a third from the “bubble,” if still no match for 2019.
The NBA Playoffs averaged 3.7 million viewers across ESPN/ABC and TNT entering the NBA Finals, up 35% from last year’s months-delayed postseason in the “bubble,” but down 10% from 2019, when the postseason aired in its usual time period. This year’s postseason began a month later than usual.
The average audience for the first three rounds of this year’s playoffs already outpaces last year’s complete postseason, including the NBA Finals (3.0M).
The 35% jump from last year is in keeping with a broader rebound in sports viewership from last year’s historic depths. The final rounds of golf’s U.S. Open (+77%) and Masters (+69%) both soared over last year’s football-season lows, while all three Triple Crown horse races jumped double-digits over last year’s delayed editions — including a three-fold jump for the Preakness. The NBA’s rebound is stronger than that of the NHL, which entering the Stanley Cup Final increased a more modest 8% over last year and declined 22% from 2019.
That the numbers are down from 2019 is no real surprise, given the circumstances. As in 2019, this year’s postseason has been short on LeBron James — who missed the playoffs that year and was knocked out in the first round this year. Unlike in 2019, when the league was able to depend on Stephen Curry and the Warriors to make up for James’ absence, Golden State failed to make the playoffs after losing in the play-in round. This year marked the first postseason since 2005 in which neither James nor Curry advanced past the first round.
After the elimination of Brooklyn and Philadelphia in second round Game 7s, the conference finals featured teams in Phoenix and Atlanta that were coming off of multi-year playoff droughts, one of the league’s smallest markets in Milwaukee, and a Clippers team that has never captured the imagination of Los Angeles — and was missing its low-key star Kawhi Leonard.
As ever, the NBA numbers look far better compared to the rest of television than to prior years. ESPN and TNT were the most-watched cable networks on 37 of 38 playoff nights, while ESPN/ABC or TNT were the most-watched networks in all of television in each night of the playoffs in adults 18-34.
Notably, the share for NBA games this postseason is the highest since the 2002-03 season. The share is the percentage of television homes viewing a program out of the number of homes with televisions in use — meaning that, unlike the usual household rating, the share filters out those homes that are not watching TV at all. The relevance of this stat has been disputed, specifically by The Athletic, and shares are generally not reported in the same depth as ratings or viewers.
Nonetheless, it is the case that of those persons who are actually watching TV — a number that in this postseason is down 21% from 2019 and down 10% from last year — a greater percentage are watching NBA playoff games than at any point since the current television arrangement began.
Figures for Tuesday’s NBA Finals Game 1 will be posted when available. Figures for the final playoff game entering the NBA Finals — Saturday’s Bucks-Hawks Game 6 on TNT — were not immediately available.
[Nielsen]
