Kings-Warriors draws largest first-round audience on any network in 21 years for ABC
The ABC broadcast of Kings-Warriors Game 4 Sunday averaged 7.5 million viewers.
The ABC broadcast of Kings-Warriors Game 4 Sunday averaged 7.5 million viewers.
In this media climate, "flat" isn't a bad thing.
The NBA did quite well on Sunday.
The game averaged 4.59 million viewers across TNT and TBS.
The Lakers and Warriors drew the best audience for a play-in game so far.
These were the best Opening Night viewership numbers for TNT since the Cavs-Celtics and Warriors-Rockets doubleheader in 2017.
Lakers-Heat averaged 7.41 million viewers, the lowest number ever recorded for a NBA Finals game (based on data going back to 1988).
The news isn't all bad, though.
The only higher-viewed regular-season game ever on ESPN was Lakers-Rockets in 2003, the first game between Shaquille O'Neal and Yao Ming.
"All of our national broadcasts are exclusively available on cable, which is losing subs daily."
Williamson is out six to eight weeks, which is not great for the Pelicans' upcoming lineup of national TV appearances.
The average audience of 6.9 million viewers (English and French) here broke a lot of Canadian sports viewership marks, and even beat the Canadian audience for The Big Bang Theory's series finale.
This year's NBA Finals continues to not produce great U.S. numbers.