NBA Opening Week Ratings Drop Due to Star Absences

The NBA’s season openers on TNT had a slight uptick over last year’s, but the next two days were a dud for the league.

Tuesday’s doubleheader saw single-digit increases for both games, including a 7% bump relative to last year for the nightcap featuring the historic father-son debut of LeBron James and Bronny James Jr. The NBA’s opening day also benefited from a lack of competition this year, as last season’s opening games aired against Game 7 of MLB’s National League Championship Series. 

But ESPN’s two-game NBA slate Wednesday and TNT’s follow-up Thursday both saw double-digit declines in viewership, according to Sports Media Watch.

Wednesday’s doubleheader—Bucks at Sixers followed by Suns at Clippers—averaged 1.6 million viewers, down 42% from last year. The Sixers played without stars Joel Embiid and Paul George, and the Clippers were missing Kawhi Leonard. The shorthanded teams, predictably, lost their opening games—and an overtime thriller and novelty of The Wall in Los Angeles was not enough to bring in a comparable audience to 2023.

However, the two-game average is up 5% versus 2022 as last season saw a massive bump in viewership driven by the NBA debut of Victor Wembanyama.

A viewership bump for a rookie prodigy’s first game and subsequent drop the following year was also seen in the NHL. ESPN’s three-day slate to open the NHL season on Oct. 8 was down 39% from last year—when one of the games featured was the debut of 2023 No. 1 pick Connor Bedard.

Wembanyama and the Spurs opened their 2024 campaign against Luka Dončić and the Mavericks as the first of ESPN’s two-game Thursday slate, drawing 1.45 million viewers. That number is down 29% compared to the same window last year, which was Sixers-Bucks, the debut of Damian Lillard in Milwaukee. The viewership numbers for Thursday’s nightcap between the Thunder and Nuggets were not immediately made available, per Sports Media Watch. 

While the NBA’s first three days dodged competition from the World Series, the third day did compete with the NFL. The Thursday Night Football game between the Vikings and Rams averaged 12.6 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, up 11% from last year.