How much does playoff viewership increase from round to round?

When the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays faced off in the Wild Card Series in 2022, just 1.76 million people tuned in. Yet, three years later, when the same two teams met in the American League Championship Series, Game 1 featured an audience of 5.19 million people.

You can see this in all major American sports. As the playoffs get deeper, more people tune in.

But what does this actually mean, in practice?

A few weeks ago, Awful Announcing took a deep dive into playoff viewership to see what happens as series “go the distance.” But what about different rounds?

Awful Announcing analyzed World Series, NBA Finals, and Stanley Cup Final viewership from the last 10 years, in addition to complete playoff viewership for all three leagues from the last four years.

For all three leagues, by far the biggest increases come between the conference finals (or the League Championship Series in MLB) and the Finals. But Major League Baseball has by far the biggest increase, up 186%. The NHL goes up 126%, while the NBA is up 96%.

From the first round to the final of each league, viewership increases 287% in the NBA, 333% in the NHL, and 353% in MLB.

Why is that? While MLB and the NBA have fairly similar viewership for their championships, the NBA averages significantly more viewers during the conference championships.

That may come down to their scheduling and time of year. While back-to-backs are hated in basketball and simply do not happen in the playoffs, they are a fact of life in baseball. MLB championship series games often overlap or start later due to this scheduling quirk, while this is simply not a problem in the NBA. MLB also faces sharper competition from the NFL and college football, while the NBA only faces the NHL playoffs.

Interestingly, MLB and the NBA also have a similar increase in their conference championships. MLB viewership goes up 43% from the Division Series to the League Championship Series, while the NBA sees a 44% increase from the conference semifinals to the conference finals. The NHL, by contrast, sees a much smaller 20% increase.

The smaller NHL increase is harder to explain, but it likely relates to the NHL’s much lower playoff viewership than the NBA and MLB. Over the last four years, the NHL has averaged 1.79 million viewers for conference finals games, which is lower than every round of the MLB and NBA playoffs.

Comparatively, the first round of the NHL playoffs averages around 936,000 viewers, or about 52% of the conference final audience. On the other hand, the NBA play-in tournament averages 36% of the audience of the NBA conference final. That suggests the NBA has a larger potential audience to pick up as the playoffs progress compared to the NHL.

Major League Baseball also has a small increase, from the Wild Card Series to the Division Series. Here, viewership increases just 11%. This too is easily explained by scheduling. Unlike the NBA and NHL, which consistently see fewer teams as the playoffs go on (the play-in being an exception), four teams get byes in MLB to the Division Series, so the same number of teams play in the Wild Card and Division Series. With the way the scheduling works out, that means lots of competition for baseball, between itself, the NFL, and college football.

From the first round to the conference semifinals, the NHL actually beats out the NBA in terms of percentage. Viewership for the NHL increases 60%, while the NBA increases 38%. You may be surprised to hear this, but much of it comes down to scheduling. The NHL regularly schedules four games on one weeknight, with all games on major cable networks. The NBA rarely does this, but when they do, two games are often on lesser networks, either NBA TV or NBCSN.

Compared to MLB and the NHL, the NBA has one additional round with the play-in tournament. Viewership for the first round increases 41% from the play-in, which is in line with the NBA’s other pre-Finals increases.

So what does this tell us?

The NBA, with the least competition because of its time of year and schedule, consistently sees 40% increases round-to-round before the Finals. MLB’s and the NHL’s round-to-round increases are much more influenced by their scheduling.

But for all three leagues, the much more meaningful increase comes between the conference championship and the final, when audiences generally double or more. That’s when the most casual audience tunes in.