The NBA saw its best slate of Christmas Day games since 2018, even as the NFL had three games airing up against the five hardwood games. ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 averaged 5.5 million viewers for five games on Christmas, which is the league’s best figure since 5.8 million in 2018 and up 4% from 5.3 million last season. The three afternoon windows saw gains, while the primetime windows were down.
The top game was a showdown of the Spurs and Thunder at 2:30pm ET on ESPN/ABC, with that game drawing 6.7 million viewers. That’s the best NBA Christmas game in that window since Cavaliers-Warriors in 2017 drew 8.8 million.
Coming in at No. 2 was the Cavaliers-Knicks game at noon with 6.4 million, which also carried the “Dunk The Halls” animated alt-cast on ESPN2, Disney and DisneyXD (280,000 viewers, up 25% from the alt-cast last season). That helped Cavs-Knicks deliver the best noon Christmas Day NBA game on record. The Knicks have now played in the noon Christmas window for the past five holidays. Mavericks-Warriors drew 6.1 million viewers at 5pm, which is the best game in that window since 2019. At 8pm, Rockets-Lakers drew 5.4 million, down sharply from 7.8 million for Lakers-Warriors in the same window in 2024. And in the late primetime window, T’Wolves-Nuggets drew 3.6 million, down a tick from 3.8 million for Suns-Nuggets in the same window last season.
The five-pack of NBA games reached 47.2 million unique viewers on Christmas, which is the best for the holiday since the season started on Christmas in 2011 and up 45% from last season. Data from Videocites shows the NBA was the most-visible brand on social media on Christmas at over 1.6 billion views. The games also had its best Christmas Day share — the percentage of viewers with TVs in use that are watching a specific program — since 2004.