As it would turn out, greatly expanding its broadcast television exposure has done wonders for NBA viewership in Year 1 of the league’s new television contracts.
NBA telecasts averaged 1.78 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, NBC, Peacock, and Prime Video throughout the regular season. That’s good for a 16% increase versus last year, the final season under the NBA’s old television contracts with ESPN, ABC, and TNT Sports. The figure also makes the 2025-26 regular season the most-watched in seven years. When including NBA TV, the year-over-year increase jumps to 35%. (The league airs fewer games on the lesser-watched NBA TV under its new contracts, which helps boost the annual comparison.)
Undoubtedly, the largest contributor to the NBA’s ratings spike is the number of games to air on broadcast networks this season. The league saw 62 games broadcast between ABC and NBC this season, up from just 19 games on ABC last season under the old contracts. The reach of broadcast networks have proven time and again to be superior to that of both cable and streaming in an ever-fragmented viewing environment.
Overall, 57 NBA telecasts eclipsed 2 million viewers this season and 19 telecasts eclipsed 3 million viewers, the most since 2011-12 and 2012-13 respectively.
Many of the NBA’s tentpole regular-season events hit multiyear highs on the backs of broadcast exposure.
NBC’s NBA Tip-Off doubleheader averaged 5.6 million viewers, the largest opening night audience for the league since 2010. Under the old deals, TNT would air the opening night doubleheader on cable.
On Christmas Day, the league’s five-game slate on ABC pulled an average of 5.5 million viewers against NFL competition, which marks the NBA’s highest Christmas Day audience since 2018. It was the second consecutive year all five Christmas Day games were simulcast on ABC.
The All-Star Game averaged 8.8 million viewers on NBC, assisted by a chunky Olympics lead-in, good for the most-watched All-Star contest since 2011. Under the prior deal, TNT aired the All-Star Game.
With the first regular season under the NBA’s new 11-year broadcast agreements now in the books, the focus turns to the postseason. The league will have significantly more playoff inventory on broadcast television this season as compared to the old deals, which should lead to similar viewership gains.
Of course, also new this year are streaming-exclusive playoff games, which got off to a rocky start on Tuesday when Prime Video experienced technical difficulties during overtime of the Heat-Hornets play-in game. Regardless, Prime Video has shown it can draw viewership at comparable levels to linear channels. Its broadcast of the NBA Cup final, for instance, averaged 3.07 million viewers in December, an increase over ABC’s audience a year prior (2.99 million viewers). The streamer’s Thursday Night Football viewership has similarly reached linear-TV-level audiences recently.
It must be noted, all of these viewership figures come with the caveat of Nielsen’s methodological changes. Any viewership numbers prior to the second weekend of February this season will benefit from expanded out-of-home viewing measurements and Nielsen’s new Big Data sample, both of which were not available in the year-ago period. Any viewership figures beyond the second weekend of February will still benefit from Big Data, though the year-ago period will include the expanded out-of-home measurements.
Even with the Nielsen changes, most of the audience increase can be attributed to the vastly different level of broadcast exposure the NBA had this season.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.