Encouraging news for ABC as the NBA Finals begin on Thursday night. The viewing audience for the 2016 NBA Playoffs is up three percent for all of the league’s TV partners in comparison to the same period last year.
As reported by Sports Business Daily‘s Austin Karp, the 78 NBA playoff games televised during this year’s postseason thus far have averaged 4.19 million viewers for ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT and NBA TV. Last year at this time, the NBA’s TV partners averaged 4.06 million viewers through 75 postseason games. However, the 4.19 million figure is down from 2014, when the NBA playoff broadcasts averaged 4.29 million viewers for 84 games before the NBA Finals that year.
TNT's 11.2 overnight raing for Warriors-Thunder Game 7 last night marks the NBA's highest-rated game ever on cable TV
— Austin Karp (@AustinKarp) May 31, 2016
Naturally, Golden State Warriors playoff games have drawn huge ratings, which has helped boost those overall numbers. But from April 16 to May 31, NBA Playoffs telecasts made for nine of the 10 highest-rated sports broadcasts on cable. Overall, 11 of the 20 telecasts on cable during that period were NBA Playoffs games.
Perhaps most impressively, ESPN topped cable ratings for each of its Eastern Conference Finals games between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors — and that was despite not drawing any audience numbers from the Toronto television market. Did LeBron James just pull in all those viewers by himself or did the Raptors making that series competitive boost those numbers?
With the star power of LeBron versus Steph Curry and the Warriors creating a heavyweight matchup in the NBA Finals, those viewership numbers figure to only improve — especially if the series is as compelling as anticipated.
