The NBA playoffs have concluded with cause for celebration in the league office on 5th Avenue.
The NBA announced Tuesday that its games averaged 5.47 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and TNT throughout the postseason, the highest number in five years. Since May 1, the league said, nine of the top 10 most-watched television programs were NBA playoff games.
The NBA Finals between the Nuggets and Heat averaged 11.64 million viewers across five games.
This number marked a 6 percent drop from last season’s Finals featuring the Warriors defeating the Celtics, which averaged 12.4 million viewers across six games.
Though all professional sports leagues would prefer their championship rounds only go up in perpetuity, this number for the Finals has to be considered a big win for the NBA.
Last year’s Finals featured arguably the sport’s biggest draw — the Warriors — against a legacy franchise in the Celtics, plus it went an extra game, and viewership tends to escalate in Game 6 of series.
The reason that the ratings were up despite the slight drop-off in the championship round is that the early rounds featured marquee matchups between some of the league’s most recognizable franchises and stars.
For example, Game 7 of Celtics-76ers on ABC drew 8.44 million viewers while Game 6 of Lakers-Warriors on ESPN drew 8.64 million — these were the two most-watched second-round games since 2011.
Five out of the six games in the Lakers-Warriors series were in the top-10 most-viewed first- or second-round playoff games in the past 10 years, according to data compiled by Sports Media Watch.
The NBA also has benefitted from out-of-home viewership.
Nielsen began including viewership from people watching in bars, restaurants, gyms, hotels or friends’ houses in 2020, and more people are out-and-about now than in the first year or two of the pandemic.
Out-of-home viewership has been a tide that has helped sports rights-holders negate some of the negative impact caused by cord-cutting, as linear TV networks are in the neighborhood of 25 percent fewer homes than they were a decade ago.