Topline
NBA viewership has climbed in recent weeks as the league’s inaugural In-Season Tournament comes to a close, a much-needed boost for the NBA, which opened the tournament last month in an effort to increase TV ratings and drive ticket sales in the early-season doldrums of the regular season following a year of faltering viewership.
NBA TV ratings have inched up in recent weeks.
Key Facts
Roughly 2 million people tuned in on national TV for a tournament game last week between the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors, marking a 93% increase over a game in a “comparable window” last season, and the most-watched tournament game so far, according to the league (teams have played a combination of tournament and standard games in recent weeks, with the top eight teams in tournament matches moving on to a single-elimination bracket this week).
That Kings-Warriors game narrowly edged out the 1.9 million people who tuned in for a Warriors match on November 22 against the Phoenix Suns on ESPN, but more decisively beat the 1.4 million who watched the Boston Celtics take on the Milwaukee Bucks on the same day on ESPN, neither of which counted toward the tournament, according to data from Nielsen.
Tournament games on ESPN and TNT averaged 1.5 million viewers, a 26% increase from games played during the same time last year, while locally broadcast games are up 20% from last November, the NBA said.
During the month of November, ESPN averaged 1.52 million viewers per game while TNT averaged 1.43 million, increases of 20% and 16%, respectively, over the same time last year, CNN reported—though the NBA’s early-season audience is still a tiny fraction of the NFL, which regularly draws upwards of 15 million viewers to its marquee Sunday night games.
However, fans are not necessarily paying more to attend the in-season tournament: Ticket prices to tournament games—which also count toward regular season standings—were priced at the same level as regular games between the same teams, and have so far remained in the same price range as non-tournament games on the secondary market.
As of Monday, the cheapest available tickets on the secondary market to the tournament’s Eastern Conference semifinals cost $68, while tickets to the Western Conference semifinals start at $75, according to data from TicketIQ, while the cheapest available tickets to non-tournament games this week range from $6 to $72.
The get-in price to the tournament championship, meanwhile, costs a significantly higher $247, a 29% increase from the initial get-in price for the game, according to TicketiQ.
What To Watch For
The NBA’s In-Season Tournament resumes at 7:30 p.m. Monday night, when the Boston Celtics take on the Indiana Pacers in a winner-moves-on Eastern Conference quarterfinal game. The other two Eastern Conference teams that advanced out of the knockout round—the Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks—face off Tuesday night, as do the Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns, and the Sacramento Kings and New Orleans Pelicans in the Western Conference. Both the east and west semifinals games are scheduled for Thursday in Las Vegas, with the winners heading to the first-ever In-Season Tournament championship game scheduled for Saturday night.
Surprising Fact
Most games in the In-Season Tournament also count toward the NBA’s regular season standings. The only game that does not count is Saturday’s championship, which, like the semifinals games, will also be played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Key Background
The NBA unveiled the In-Season Tournament in July in an effort to boost TV viewership and increase fan engagement in an otherwise sleepy stretch of the regular season. NBA leadership had also expressed optimism that the tournament—modeled after similar competitions in European soccer—would generate revenue ahead of the league’s upcoming media rights deal, as its current nine-year, $24 billion deal with ESPN and Turner Sports comes to a close at the end of the 2024-2025 regular season, ESPN reported. Ed Desser, a sports media consultant who negotiated the NBA’s 2014 media deal, told Bloomberg he expects the NBA rights to more than double “and potentially quite a bit more.” The NBA’s ratings have remained flat in recent years, with ratings for the 2022-2023 season dropping to 1.59 million average viewers across ABC, ESPN and TNT from 1.61 million the year before. Ratings for the NBA Finals earlier this year also fell to an average of 11.65 million viewers per game, a 6% drop from 2022 to 2023.
Further Reading
Day 2 Of NBA In-Season Tournament Starts Tonight: Here’s What To Know About The New Competition (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/12/04/has-the-nbas-in-season-tournament-paid-off-these-tv-ratings-suggest-yes-probably/