The all-California NBA Playoffs first-round series between the Golden State Warriors and the Sacramento Kings is resonating with national audiences. As per Nielsen, ABC’s national broadcast of Sunday’s Game 4 of that series averaged 7.5 million viewers. That marks the highest number for any first-round game on any network in 21 years.
That game also received the typical Kings and Warriors local broadcasts on NBC Sports California and NBC Sports Bay Area respectively, so the numbers of people watching overall would be even higher. The ABC broadcast had a peak audience of 10.4 million, which came late in the Warriors’ 126-125 win. Here’s more on that from ESPN’s Ben Cafardo:
🏀 Game 4 of #DubNation vs. #BeamTeam on @ABCNetwork was the most-watched #NBAPlayoffs first round game on any network in 21 years. (Since 2002 Kobe/Shaq-led Lakers vs. Blazers).
đź“şAverage audience of 7,523,000 viewers, peaking with 10,406,000 viewers at 6 p.m. ET.
(Nielsen) pic.twitter.com/H82TNlUYWq— Ben Cafardo (@Ben_ESPN) April 25, 2023
Of course, this game being on broadcast TV rather than cable makes a big difference. There’s a current Nielsen-estimated TV universe of 123.8 million homes, and ESPN was in 74 million homes last fall (with TNT probably reasonably similar; it was in 79 million homes, similar to ESPN, in January 2022). With that said, though, there have regularly been first-round playoff games on ABC since ESPN and ABC (along with TNT) took over national NBA rights ahead of the 2002-03 season. But this beat all of them, with the last game producing ratings of this magnitude that Lakers-Blazers Game 3 (back when first-round series were still a best-of-five) Cafardo mentions above.
It’s certainly notable to see these kinds of numbers for a particular game. And they add to what’s been a record-breaking start to the NBA Playoffs for ABC and ESPN (and also a multi-year high for TNT) so far.
[ESPN Press Room; top photo of the Warriors’ Klay Thompson’s reaction to the win from Darren Yamashita/USA Today Sports]
