After a sluggish start to the season on the viewership front, the Emirates NBA Cup has helped the NBA rebound.
Tuesday’s opening night of the Emirates NBA Cup that featured the Dallas Mavericks traveling to play the Golden State Warriors averaged 2.14 million viewers on TNT, per Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch. That’s good for an 84% increase over last year’s comparable game between the Los Angeles Clippers and Denver Nuggets.
The game notably marked Mavericks guard Klay Thompson’s return to play his former team, where he won four championships. The audience was TNT’s most-watched NBA game since Opening Night.
Earlier in the evening on TNT, the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers drew an audience of 1.71 million viewers for a game that marked the season debut of 76ers star Joel Embiid. That game also saw a massive year-over-year increase of 58% versus the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder a season ago.
Steph Curry and the Warriors have now drawn the two largest NBA audiences this season outside of Opening Night. Golden State’s game last week against the Boston Celtics drew 2.14 million viewers on ESPN.
Through the first two weeks of the season, TNT games had been averaging 1.8 million viewers (a figure that includes Opening Night which averaged an audience of 2.95 million). Clearly Curry’s star power, and Thompson’s return, drew the intrigue of fans on Tuesday. But it’s also possible that in the second season of the NBA Cup, the league’s strategy is starting to pay dividends.
It’s too soon to tell just one game into the competition’s group stage, but the early returns are positive. And in today’s linear TV environment, even incremental gains can be hard to come by. It’ll be interesting to see if the NBA Cup can draw outsized regular season audiences in its second year.
