The NBA and its television partners are certainly enjoying a ratings renaissance so far during the playoffs — but will it continue without the golden children from Golden State?
While the NBA and its TV partners would have loved a Los Angeles Lakers-Golden State Warriors Game 7 after the series delivered excellent audience numbers, the series ended with 8.64 million viewing L.A.’s 122-101 win on Friday at Crypto.com Arena in Game 6.
Advertisement
It tipped off at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN and ended up with the best audience of a first- or second-round NBA playoff game since 2010.
The six-game Lakers-Warriors series averaged 7.8 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and TNT to make it the most-watched semifinal series since Bulls-Knicks averaged 11.1 million over five games on NBC and TNT in 1996, according to Sports Media Watch.
Obviously, the draw was the historic Lakers franchise led by LeBron James versus the Stephen Curry-Klay Thompson-Draymond Green Warriors that have dominated the league (and TV ratings) for years.
The Warriors have played in nine of the top 10 first- or second-round playoff games by TV viewership, and that includes the six games against the Lakers this playoff season.
But now the Lakers, themselves long a TV draw thanks to a storied past and being in the nation’s No. 2 media market, move on to face Denver. Will the Warriors’ absence hurt the NBA’s playoff viewership the rest of the way?
“I think conference final and finals viewership can still outpace last year, but I’m not expecting the remaining series to deliver the kind of multi-decade highs the league saw in the first two rounds,” said Jon Lewis, who runs Sports Media Watch and has analyzed audience data and trends for the site since launching it in 2006. “A lot depends on quality of series and matchups.”
The NBA already has been paid its media rights billions, so the granular ebbs and flows of playoff viewership are interesting but ultimately not vital inflection points for the league’s financial health and general fan affinity.
“Warriors would definitely have been the better draw this year, but I’m sure there’s no complaining among NBA and ESPN execs with the Lakers advancing. You can’t always get the No. 1 option, which is why you want a deep bench of marquee teams,” Lewis said.
Advertisement
On the other side of the playoff bracket, Game 6 of the Celtics-Sixers series averaged 6.2 million viewers for ESPN on Thursday, and then Boston’s victorious Game 7 finale averaged 8.44 million viewers on Sunday to make it ABC’s most-watched conference semifinal game since 2011.
On the Disney-owned networks, the NBA’s 27 playoff games this season have averaged 5.22 million viewers, which is a 14 percent increase over 2022.
Game 1 of the Lakers-Nuggets series starts at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN while Heat-Celtics begins at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday on TNT.
The conference finals winners will meet in the NBA Finals beginning at 8:30 p.m. June 1, and the latest the finals could go is a Game 7 scheduled for 8 p.m. June 18. A sweep would end with Game 4 starting at 8:30 p.m. June 9. All finals games are on ABC.
Last season’s six-game finals won by the Warriors over the Celtics averaged 12.4 million viewers on ABC, with the Game 6 clincher averaging 13.99 million viewers.
The full-series average marked a modest return to pre-pandemic viewership, beating 2020’s record-low 7.45 million average and 2021’s 9.91 million average but failing to reach 2019’s 15.1 million average.
The finals haven’t averaged 20 million or more viewers since hitting 20.38 million for 2017’s Golden State-Cleveland series. The last single finals game to hit 30 million viewers was the Cavs’ Game 7 clincher in 2016. No finals have averaged more than 30 million viewers, but the six-game 1998 Chicago Bulls-Utah Jazz series is the record at 29.04 million viewers.
Some of the things (outside of a global sports-roiling pandemic) that affect a finals TV audience include the participating teams and stars, how long a series goes, thrillers versus blowouts, storylines and drama, competition on other channels, tip-off times, etc.
Advertisement
All of this is against an industry backdrop of cord-cutting amid the proliferation of consumer options, including the rise of streaming, that has diluted the overall U.S. TV audience that also watches prime-time television programming in increasingly fewer numbers.
Why the league’s viewership at the micro and macro levels does matter is its media rights are coming up for renewal or replacement, and the NBA is expected to land billions of dollars in new money from TV networks and streamers — something to watch over the next two years because the nuances of the business side affect what happens with rosters, contracts, hires, arenas, etc.
GO DEEPER
NBA fans will soon watch the sport differently, and the change has already begun
In other NBA television action, the draft lottery (better known as The Victor Wembanyama Sweepstakes) is at 8 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN from Chicago. The draft itself is at 8 p.m. June 22 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and airs live on ABC (first round, with ESPN covering the full draft).
NHL: After the Dallas Stars eliminated the Seattle Kraken in Game 7 on Monday, we now have a very southern feel to the teams left vying for the Stanley Cup. The Eastern Conference finals matchup is the Florida Panthers versus the Carolina Hurricanes, and in the West, the Stars face the Vegas Golden Knights — a team that plays in the neon oasis capital of the Mojave Desert in the American Southwest. So it’s almost entirely a southern conference finals, depending on your geographical region preferences.
With Dallas winning, the northernmost team by latitude in the conference finals is Las Vegas. Not that it likely makes much of a viewership difference. The Kraken, in just their second season as an expansion team, could have given the semifinals and finals a modest curiosity/feel-good story lift for TV ratings, but that still doesn’t feel like a significant viewership driver.
Hockey isn’t traditionally the preferred sport across the southern United States — hello, college football, the NFL, and NASCAR — but it certainly has diehard fans who’ll watch. We’ll find out just how many nationally will care soon.
While we don’t yet have the Dallas-Seattle Game 7 audience metrics, the Game 6 broadcast on Saturday averaged just over 2 million viewers on ESPN. Heading into the weekend, the second round of the NHL playoffs had been averaging 1.27 million viewers in aggregate on TNT, TBS and ESPN, which Sports Media Watch said is down 4 percent over last season at the same point.
Advertisement
Another storyline that affects wider viewership is the absence of Canadian teams in the later playoffs again. The last NHL team from The Great White North in the Cup final was the Montreal Canadiens as runners-up in 2021. They were also the last Stanley Cup champions from Canada — in 1993. That’s an ignominious 30th anniversary for Canada’s national sport (although its homegrown players obviously populate the NHL).
Last year’s final won by the Avalanche over the Lightning in six games averaged 2.31 million U.S. viewers on ABC, which was the best average since 3 million watched the seven-game series won by the Blues over the Bruins in 2019 on NBC. The clincher that year had a U.S. record 4.9 million viewers.
The best Stanley Cup Final series average was 3.3 million U.S. viewers for 2013’s Blackhawks title run over the Bruins. Worst was a 1.2 million average for the Ducks beating the Senators in five games in 2007 on NBC.
The finals have averaged 2.48 million U.S. viewers over the past decade.
The NHL is in the second year of its seven-year, $2.8 billion media rights deal with Disney that puts national games on ABC, ESPN, ESPN+ and Hulu through 2027-28. It also has a seven-year pact worth $225 million annually with Turner Sports that also ends at the same time.
The league’s 12-year, $4.9 billion Canadian TV rights contract with Rogers Communications ends in 2026.
GOLF: The year’s second major, the PGA Championship, begins Thursday at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y. TV coverage begins with early-round coverage on ESPN while the weekend airs on CBS from 1 to 7 p.m. both days. ESPN+ streams coverage all four days, and both ESPN and ESPN2 have alternative coverage. Last year’s final round, won by Justin Thomas in a playoff, averaged 5.27 million viewers on CBS. That was an unsurprising year-over-year decline from 2021 when proven TV-draw Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship to card his sixth major (and become the PGA’s oldest major tournament winner at age 50).
HORSE RACING: Early coverage of the 148th Preakness Stakes begins on CNBC and Peacock at 1 p.m. Saturday before NBC picks it up for the primary race at 4:30 p.m. from Pimlico Racecourse in Baltimore. Post time is 6:50 p.m. Kentucky Derby winner Mage is the 3-1 favorite, barring a scratch, and if he wins it sets up a potentially big audience eager to root for a Triple Crown winner (and first since Justify in 2018) when the Belmont Stakes airs for the first time on Fox on June 10. Last year’s Preakness, which didn’t include Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike, averaged a disappointing 5.26 million viewers.
Advertisement
WNBA: The W begins its 27th season on Friday with its widest array of TV partners. More than 200 games will air nationally this season on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPN+, CBS and CBS Sports Network, Paramount+, ION, NBA TV, Amazon Prime Video, Twitter and Meta Quest, per USA Today.
Friday’s four games begin with Sun-Fever (WNBA League Pass) and Liberty-Mystics (NBA TV) at 7 p.m. followed by Sky-Lynx (WNBA League Pass) at 8 p.m. and finishing with Mercury-Sparks at 11 p.m. (ESPN, ESPN+). Saturday is more of a wider national TV footprint with a doubleheader on ABC starting at 1 p.m. with Dream-Wings and then Aces-Storm at 3 p.m.
NFL: In case you missed it, the NFL and NBCUniversal announced Monday that the Jan. 13 prime-time wild-card game will be on Peacock, the streaming app that has 22 million paid users. It’s the first time the most powerful U.S. sports league has put a playoff game exclusively behind a streaming paywall. Last season, it put all Thursday night games on Amazon Prime Video and will also have a 2023 regular-season game in December between the Bills and Chargers on Peacock and a Black Friday game on Prime (though not behind the Prime paywall).
The wild-card deal represents NBC’s desire to grow Peacock’s subscription base and get it into profitability — it lost more than $700 million in 2022 — while the NFL is trading eyeball reach for fresh cash (reportedly $110 million for this one game) by toe-dipping into streaming exclusivity deals. Streaming games are still shown on local linear television in the participating teams’ home markets, so the “exclusivity” tag comes with a small asterisk.
All viewership data is from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, and other metrics via the TV networks, Nielsen, Sports Media Watch, ShowBuzz Daily, 506Sports.com and the leagues, unless otherwise noted. All times U.S. Eastern.
GO DEEPER
How ESPN landed Aaron Rodgers and the Jets vs. the Bills in Week 1: Media Circus
(Photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)
