The NBA may have unwrapped a changing of the guard on Christmas Day.
The five-game NBA Christmas Day slate averaged 5.53 million viewers across ABC and the ESPN cable networks last Thursday, up 4% from last year and officially the league’s highest average on the holiday since 2018. Keep in mind that Nielsen did not begin tracking out-of-home viewing its estimates until 2020 and did not do so in 100 percent of markets until February of this year, meaning that prior year figures include less out-of-home viewing (if any at all).
Nielsen also shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” metric in September that combines its traditional panel with data from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those methodological changes could easily account for all of this year’s 4% increase, to say nothing of comparisons to years before Nielsen began tracking out-of-home viewing.
While the average minute audience was just 4% from last year, the total reach was up 45% from 32.48 to 47.19 million, the league’s highest on Christmas since 2011 — when the season started on Christmas due to an owner-imposed lockout. A disparity like that is an indication of higher viewing levels over a shorter duration than a year ago.
The afternoon games accounted for the lion’s share of the viewing, with Spurs-Thunder topping the charts with 6.71 million — the largest audience for a Christmas game in that midday timeslot since Cavaliers-Warriors in 2017. San Antonio’s win, which peaked with 7.4 million in the 4:15 PM ET quarter-hour, increased 51% from Timberwolves-Mavericks last year (4.45M).
Cavaliers-Knicks led-in with 6.37 million, up 27% from Spurs-Knicks last year (5.00M) and the most-watched Noon ET Christmas game on record. The previous high was 6.01 million for Spurs-Pistons on ABC in 2005 (6.01M).* That figure includes 280,000 for a “Dunk the Halls” animated simulcast on ESPN2 and Disney Channel, up 25%. New York’s win had the highest peak audience of the day at 8.2 million in the 2:45 PM ET quarter-hour.
This year marks the first time since 2008 — the first year of the five-game schedule — that neither of the two most-watched Christmas Day NBA games featured LeBron James or Stephen Curry. Curry of course was not in the NBA at that time, and James’ Cavaliers did not play in one of the featured ESPN/ABC windows (instead facing the Wizards on TNT).
The early games outpaced the two traditional featured Christmas Day windows of late afternoon and primetime, which featured James, Curry and Kevin Durant.
The Warriors’ comfortable win over Dallas ranked third for the day with 6.11 million, up 16% from Sixers-Celtics last year (5.24M). The Lakers’ blowout loss to the Rockets followed with just 5.35 million, down 32% from last year’s head-to-head matchup of James and Curry, which faced no NFL competition and was decided in the final seconds (7.91M).
Nuggets-Timberwolves closed out the night with 3.61 million — down 7% from Nuggets-Suns last year (3.90M), but still the second-most watched Christmas game in that late night window. Keep in mind it was only the third of those late night windows to air on broadcast television, joining last year’s game and Suns-Nuggets in 2022 (2.52M).
* 2005 game was a 12:30 PM ET start.