The National Basketball Association (NBA) is posting double-digit audience growth across most of its new media partners in the first season of its revamped rights agreements, according to new data cited in a report on Monday.
The data, from Nielsen and cited by Sports Media Watch, showed NBA games averaged 1.8 million viewers across the league’s three national broadcast partners — Amazon’s Prime Video, Comcast’s NBC and the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN. Games aired by NBC are also streamed on Peacock, and some NBA games are exclusive to the streaming service; ESPN produces games for its own channels as well as broadcast network ABC.
The 1.8 million viewers per game is a 16 percent increase compared to the league’s prior distribution deal, which didn’t include NBC and Prime Video but did offer games through Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD) TNT Sports. Prime Video absorbed most of the games that were previously offered through WBD’s TV rights package.
NBC has delivered the largest year-over-year gains. Games airing on the broadcast network are averaging 2.6 million viewers, up 97 percent compared with similar windows last season, most of which aired on TNT. NBC’s broader distribution as a broadcast network has expanded the league’s reach, a factor that figured prominently in the NBA’s 2024 media rights negotiations.
Nine of the 10 most-watched games so far this season have aired on broadcast television, underscoring the impact of the league’s broadcast-heavy strategy. The lone exception is the NBA Cup Final, which averaged 3.1 million viewers on Prime Video and currently ranks as the 10th-most-watched game of the season.
ESPN and ABC are also posting gains. The Disney-owned networks are averaging 2.06 million viewers per game, up 18 percent year over year. Five of the 10 most-watched games have aired on ESPN/ABC, all of them on Christmas Day.
When including games televised on NBA TV, total viewership has increased 38 percent compared to last season, when WBD operated the cable network. NBA TV has aired fewer games this season under the new agreements, eliminating several lower-rated matchups from the overall dataset.
Some of the viewership gains are attributed to Nielsen’s new methodology for TV measurement, which incorporates its traditional panels-based data with first-party analytics, something Nielsen calls Big Data + Panels. Nielsen is also improving out-of-home viewership to account for fans of pro-basketball and other sports who watch live events in bars, restaurants, hotels and other public venues.
Prime Video is the only partner reporting a decline versus comparable windows last season. Across 44 games, the streaming service is averaging 1.06 million viewers, according to Nielsen data. In 30 comparable games, it is averaging 1.21 million viewers, down 7 percent.