The NBA’s shift from a pair of cable-focused media rights agreements to a trio of new deals centered on broadcast and streaming have had encouraging early returns.
Under the NBA’s new set of agreements with ESPN, NBC, and Prime Video, viewership for this season has averaged 1.81 million viewers through last week’s NBA Cup, according to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch. That figure is up 27% compared to the same point last year, when much of the media was in a panic over lackluster NBA ratings. When including games that aired on NBA TV, the year-over-year jump is even more significant, increasing by 53% thanks to fewer games airing on the sparsely watched league-owned cable network this season.
The primary reason for such a substantial jump, the league would say, is reach. The NBA’s old broadcast agreements saw the vast majority of games air on either ESPN or TNT, two cable networks with reach that continues to shrink as consumers cut the cord. This season, the NBA has a regular weekday window on the NBC broadcast network, two regular streaming windows on Prime Video and Peacock, in addition to its regular ESPN window. At the same point last season, just two games had aired on broadcast television, with the rest being exclusive to cable.
As Lewis notes, the league will shockingly go the entire month of December without a single cable-exclusive game, as all of ESPN’s Christmas Day slate will be simulcast on ABC. That’s the type of change that can greatly increase reach for the league.
The NBA revealed Monday that 87 million viewers had watched at least part of an NBA game so far this season, up a staggering 89% versus last year. That’s simply meeting viewers where they are, which is increasingly on broadcast and streaming and not on cable.
There is, of course, the caveat that the NBA’s average viewership numbers are being measured with Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology and expanding out-of-home viewing measurements. Both typically serve to increase viewership for live sports compared to prior years, but almost certainly don’t account for the magnitude of viewership increase the league has seen this year.
Just a year after many NBA critics believed the sky was falling, the league’s viewership success (and $76 billion media rights deals) would seem to suggest anything but.