Gaining broadcast network exposure for the first time, the NBA Draft managed a modest bump over last year’s low despite competition from the Summer Olympics.
Airing opposite the Summer Olympics, Thursday’s NBA Draft averaged 2.26 million viewers across ESPN and ABC — up 6% from last year, when the event took place in November (2.13M), but down 27% from 2019, when Zion Williamson went #1 overall and the event took place in June (3.09M). Coverage aired on ESPN and ESPNU in those years.
The opening round of the draft, which aired across both ESPN and ABC, averaged 2.98 million — up 12% from last year’s 2.65 million on ESPN and ESPNU.
This year marked the first time that ABC carried NBA Draft coverage. The network was scheduled to do so last year, but that plan fell through after the event was postponed from June to November.
The addition of ABC helped mitigate the competition from the Summer Olympics, which averaged 19.2 million viewers across NBC’s various platforms Thursday night. In a usual year, the draft faces very little notable sports competition.
The NBA Draft continues to occupy its usual position as a (very) distant second to the NFL Draft, which this year averaged 6.08 million over three days on ESPN, ABC and NFL Network. It more-than-doubled the opening round of this year’s MLB Draft, which averaged 1.03 million. No other sports draft cracked the million viewer mark.
The NBA Draft was the final event of a full calendar year of NBA telecasts, running from July 30 of last year through July 29 of this year — a 12-month stretch that included a whopping 383 national telecasts (regular season, playoffs, All-Star Game, drafts and preseason) across ESPN, ABC and TNT.
[Nielsen estimates from ESPN]
