NBA, NHL growth boosts those leagues' broadcasting setups
Published about 13 hours ago • 5 min read
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NHL, NBA see major regular season ratings growth
An ESPN image on the NHL success they found this regular season. (ESPN Press Room.)
Many leagues' broadcasting rights have at least partially changed homes over the past few years. That's led to a lot of pushback from those who preferred the old arrangements, including claims that shifts like the NBA's (made ahead of this season, now including ABC/ESPN, NBC, and Prime Video rather than ABC/ESPN and TNT Sports) and the NHL's (made ahead of the 2021-22 season, now including ABC/ESPN and TNT Sports rather than NBC, USA and associated other cable channels) would lead to declines in fan interest and diminishing ratings. But the recently-concluded NBA and NHL regular seasons both saw big year-over-year viewership jumps, gains beyond the magnitude of what measurement changes alone might suggest. And that suggests that the media deals for both leagues are working out pretty well, and that some of the general truisms about media deals and ratings may not always apply.
To start with, as per Jon Lewis at Sports Media Watch, the NBA's regular season numbers were up 16 percent year over year in a straight comparison of last season's ABC/ESPN/TNT numbers to this season's NBC/ABC/ESPN/Prime Video numbers, or up 35 percent with NBA TV factored in (NBA TV carried fewer games this year). That made for the most-watched NBA season on primary broadcast partners in seven years and the most-watched across all networks in 13 years. And while there have been significant boosts for many sports broadcasts recently from Nielsen methodology changes, the jumps here are well beyond that.
There are several points of interest there. One is the advantages for the NBA of having two media partners with broadcast television networks (Comcast with NBC and Disney with ABC). I've written a lot about the importance of broadcast TV in this era, especially with many people going away from cable/satellite/virtual multichannel programming distributors to combinations of antennas (to get broadcast TV) and streaming services (which also sometimes include broadcast TV programming). But when these deals were struck, some argued that any viewership gains there would be more than offset by a shift from basic cable (TNT) to streaming (Prime Video). That has not proven to be the case, and that speaks to a larger story of how well sports broadcasts are performing for Amazon.
As I wrote in 2018 when Prime Video gained (at that point non-exclusive) streaming rights for Thursday Night Football, Amazon's setup for sports is quite different from any other streaming service's approach. First, they have revenue sources most broadcasters don't; in addition to subscription income and ad revenue, their commerce platform presents all sorts of opportunities for integration with sports, including with in-house ads that give viewers the opportunity to click to order products. Second, Prime Video has a massive potential viewer base thanks to the success of Amazon Prime overall; that's been crucial to the numbers they've put up with the NFL, including a record average audience for Thursday Night Football this past season, even above the broadcast networks that previously carried that package. And that's been seen in their NBA success thus far as well.
Prime Video's regular-season NBA coverage (which came with an interesting crop of only-recently-retired analysts, similar to the mix they've found success with on NFL coverage) averaged 1.00 million U.S. viewers, and 1.09 million for the 53 of their windows directly comparable to last year (which was down two percent). The other windows were generally in the afternoon in U.S. time zones and thus drew lesser audiences stateside, but likely saw better numbers in Europe (important, as Amazon has global NBA rights). But what really stood out were the numbers they posted for their first exclusive presentation of the Play-In Tournament. Here's more from a Prime Video release sent out Tuesday:
Prime Video’s inaugural presentation of the SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament averaged an impressive 2.79M U.S. viewers across six exclusive broadcast windows, topping last season’s delivery on linear channels by +18% among total viewers (P2+), and attracting considerable gains within key adult demographics under 55. On all nights of the Play-In Tournament, Prime Video was the most-viewed network in primetime among People Under 50, Adults 18-34, Adults 18-49, Adults 25-54, Males 18-34, Males 18-49, and Males 25-54.
After each game, live presentations of the NBA Nightcap postgame show averaged 1.08M viewers on Prime throughout the tournament, drawing a season high of 1.33M on Friday following Warriors-Suns.
NBA on Prime continues to attract significant audiences around the world. According to Amazon’s first-party viewership data, the Play-In Tournament was viewed on 52M devices globally for over 2.5B minutes across more than 200 countries and territories. Over the six games, top-performing markets outside of the U.S. included Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, India, Spain, France, and Colombia.
Thus, the combination of broadcast, cable, and streaming the NBA currently has seems to be working out just fine for it. But it's notable that the NHL has also posted significant success for its own model, currently spread across ABC/ESPN and TNT Sports. Here's what TNT Sports noted there last week:
NHL on TNT’s fifth regular season of coverage has delivered its most watched on record, with overall viewership up 19% vs. last season through 71 regular season games. Women viewers aged 2+ showed particular strong growth, up 26% vs. last season.
TNT Sports also posted its most watched Sunday package of games on record, averaging 713k viewers, up 77%.
Regular season viewership accelerated after the Olympics break in February, with NHL on TNT games averaging 453k viewers since then, up 47% vs. the average audience after the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off, and the most watched post-Olympics/All-Star period in TNT’s five years of coverage.
...All in, NHL coverage across TNT Sports’ networks reached 20.4 million viewers this season, up 37% vs. last season.
ESPN and ABC also saw big gains for their package. Here's more on that from ESPN PR's Andrea DiCristoforo earlier this week:
ESPN scored its most‑watched NHL season of the current rights era, topping every season since the rights returned to ESPN in 2021‑22, across ESPN and ABC.
ESPN averaged 760K viewers across 54 games on ABC and ESPN, +30% YoY and bested the 2023-24 regular season, which was the previous high in the current rights era (667K viewers).
Across key demos, the NHL on ESPN networks experienced significant year-over-year audience growth, including females +36%, P2-17 +46% and P25-34 +32%.
Individually, the NHL on ESPN averaged 602K viewers (38 games) and the NHL on ABC averaged 1.1 million viewers (16 games), both new highs in ESPN’s current rights era. Games on ESPN were up a strong 48% YoY, while ABC was up 33%. ESPN bested the 2023-24 season (487K viewers) to earn the top spot, while ABC outpaced the 2022-23 season (1 million viewers).
Yes, some of those gains are undoubtedly about the measurement changes that seem to have lifted all sports boats. But the gains for both the NHL and NBA seem to go beyond that. And it's interesting that their gains come across a wide range of networks, including broadcast, cable, and (in the case of the NBA) streaming-exclusive. The overall takeaway there may be that it's not as easy as some make it seem to declare that any of those mediums are inherently superior: yes, broadcast networks tend to come with more audience, but they also come with lower rights fees. And the combinations that both the NBA and NHL have struck seem to be working out for them, at least for the moment.
