On a day of March Madness matinees, the NBA’s new media rights deal allowed it to capitalize on an unopposed primetime window.
Last weekend’s Knicks-Thunder NBA “Sunday Night Basketball” game on NBC averaged a combined 3.4 million viewers across Nielsen (1.6, 3.07M) and Adobe Analytics, marking the largest NBA audience during March Madness in a decade — since Warriors-Spurs on ABC in 2016 (5.2M).
The NBA is usually off of broadcast television for the entirety of the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, but the new “Sunday Night Basketball” package allows the league to take advantage of an unopposed primetime window on Elite Eight Sunday, the only night of the men’s tournament on which there are no competing primetime games.
Not counting NBA TV, the last NBA game to air in that window was a Heat-Thunder NBA Finals preview on ESPN in 2012, which was the network’s most-watched game of that season with 3.5 million. On the rare occasions ABC would air a game on Elite Eight Sunday, it would be in afternoon windows directly opposite college basketball — usually resulting in audiences at or near season-lows.
(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 mere months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes generally skew comparisons to past years.)
Oklahoma City’s win was the most-watched sporting event of the week outside of March Madness, topping each of the MLB Opening Week games. Keep in mind that only one of those MLB games totally avoided tournament competition, the Netflix-exclusive season opener.
The combined audience ranks as the highest for an NBA game this season since Celtics-Lakers on “Sunday Night Basketball” in late February.
The Warriors-Nuggets nightcap averaged 3.0 million across Nielsen (1.3, 2.37M) and Adobe. Both games outdrew the previous week’s Timberwolves-Celtics game on “Sunday Night Basketball,” which averaged a combined 2.4 million (1.89M per Nielsen) opposite a full night of tournament games.
The league is in position to capitalize on the lack of competition again this coming Sunday night, as the women’s national title game is set for the afternoon. With this Sunday being Easter — a holiday associated with increased television viewing in the out-of-home era — viewership could again be strong, even with Lakers G Luka Doncic unlikely to play in what would have been his fourth return to Dallas against the moribund Mavericks.
In other recent NBA action, ABC last Saturday averaged 1.59 million for Pistons-Timberwolves, a game that was added to the schedule to replace a postponed Warriors-Timberwolves game in January. ESPN also drew 1.24 million for Rockets-Timberwolves (-1%) and 1.07 million for Hawks-Pistons (-26%) the preceding Wednesday.
Returning to this week’s play, NBC averaged 2.4 million (1.9M per Nielsen) for the latest edition of its “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” regional window, which featured Knicks-Rockets in most markets and Blazers-Clippers on the West Coast. On the equivalent night last year, TNT and truTV drew 1.03 million for Timberwolves-Nuggets and 775,000 for Suns-Bucks.