Airing adjacent to the Winter Olympics, viewership for the second edition of NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” improved on the first — and hit a multi-year high.
Last weekend’s Celtics-Lakers NBA “Sunday Night Basketball” game averaged a Nielsen-estimated 2.5 rating and 4.52 million viewers on NBC, with the latter figure rising to 5.6 million including a Telemundo simulcast and streaming audience measured by Adobe Analytics. Viewership increased dramatically from the equivalent Sunday night last year, when ESPN averaged Nielsen-only audiences of 1.73 million for Grizzlies-Cavaliers and 1.48 million for Thunder-Timberwolves.
The combined audience is the largest for a regular season NBA game, excluding Christmas and Opening Night, since ABC drew 6.04 million for a February 2017 Warriors-Thunder game that marked Kevin Durant’s first return to Oklahoma City as an opponent. (Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is less than six months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes — all changes that generally skew comparisons to past years.)
Coverage aired between NBC’s live and encore presentations of the Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony, though the direct lead-in was from the network’s “Milan Gold” Olympic recap special.
Boston’s easy win outdrew both games of NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” debut on February 1, Lakers-Knicks (4.5M) and Thunder-Nuggets (2.9M). It delivered the fifth-largest audience of the NBA season, behind Rockets-Thunder on NBC Opening Night (5.9M per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics) and three Christmas Day games on ESPN/ABC (Spurs-Thunder: 6.7M; Cavaliers-Knicks: 6.4M; Mavericks-Warriors: 6.1M).
Four months into in its first NBA season since 2001-02, NBC owns four of the top eight NBA audiences — and six of the top ten if one includes the NBA All-Star Game and NBA All-Star Saturday.
Even on an NBC-only, Nielsen-only basis, “Sunday Night Basketball” was the most-watched non-Olympic sportscast of the weekend — topping the NASCAR Cup Series race from Atlanta on FOX (2.4, 4.49M).
Earlier in the day, ABC averaged a 1.7 and 2.95 million for Nuggets-Warriors — up a tick in ratings and 2% in viewership from Mavericks-Warriors last year (1.6, 2.90M).
Cavaliers-Thunder led-in with 2.09 million, down 7% from a larger-market matchup of Knicks-Celtics a year ago (2.24M). Rockets-Knicks drew 1.99 million on “NBA Saturday Primetime” the previous night, down 31% from last year’s Lakers-Nuggets game (2.87M).
On ESPN last Friday, Clippers-Lakers drew 1.41 million — up 22% from Timberwolves-Rockets last year (1.16M) — and Mavericks-Timberwolves chipped in 1.09 million (-4%).