NBA Holding Strong Double-Digit Growth 2021: Christmas Update

As Christmas gets closer, the NBA is still hitting it out of the park with double-digit viewer gains. From NBCUniversal to ESPN and even Amazon’s Prime Video, NBA games have been pulling in an average of 1.81 million viewers up to the NBA Cup Final, marking a 27% increase from last year. This surge is the highest average at this point in a season since 2017, with a year-over-year jump of 53% when including NBA TV games, even though the network is airing fewer games this season.

The NBA owes a lot of this success to its new media rights deal. Unlike last year when most games were exclusively on cable, this season, there isn’t a single cable-exclusive game in December. ESPN will only air games on Christmas Day, all simulcast on ABC. This season has also brought in primetime broadcast windows on NBC and an exclusive streaming package on Amazon Prime Video. While streaming usually doesn’t match linear TV viewership, Prime Video is only down three percent from last year in equivalent windows.

Recent comparisons showed that Prime Video drew more viewers for the Knicks-Spurs game (3.07M) than last year’s ABC broadcast of the Bucks-Thunder final (2.99M). The shift in methodology to include more data sources might have had an impact on these numbers, but the fact that Prime Video viewership is competing closely with traditional TV networks speaks volumes. With an expanded list of nationally televised games across various platforms, the NBA’s reach has seen a substantial jump. The league shared that over 87 million viewers have caught part of an NBA game this season, marking an 89% increase from last year. It’s clear that the NBA is captivating audiences across digital and traditional media.