NBA Playoffs Opening Weekend Is Second-Most-Watched Since 2011

The NBA’s viewership success has continued into the postseason.

The opening weekend of the NBA playoffs averaged 4.3M viewers across ABC/ESPN, NBC/Peacock, and Amazon Prime Video, a slight dip compared to 4.4 million last year, but still the second-most-watched opening weekend since 2011. The numbers are based on Nielsen data, including Adobe Analytics for NBC. Like most sports, changes to Nielsen’s methodology have helped boost the NBA’s ratings.

Expanding to Monday, the NBA is averaging 4.32 million viewers, up 3% from last year.

Last year’s opening weekend fell on Easter, which has historically helped boost viewership, including for this year’s women’s national championship game. This year’s Sunday games on ABC/ESPN and NBC/Peacock averaged 4.87 million, a tick above the 4.86 million last year on ABC/ESPN and TNT.

NBC delivered the largest audience of the weekend in the late-night game with the help of rising superstar Victor Wembanyama’s playoff debut. Game 1 between the Spurs and Trail Blazers drew 5.73 million viewers despite a 9 p.m. ET tip-off.

Unfortunately, Wembanyama entered concussion protocol after hitting his head on the floor in Game 2 on Tuesday. It’s unclear if he will be available Friday for Game 3 in Portland.

Total viewership numbers were unsurprisingly pulled down by Amazon Prime given the lower distribution of the streamer. But the Saturday afternoon Hawks-Knicks game still averaged 3.97 million viewers, making it Prime’s most-watched game of the season.

The league continues to value Prime Video as it delivers a younger audience. Prime’s Saturday tripleheader had an average viewership age of 45, more than five years younger than the comparable games last year.

Prime Video did deliver a boost in viewership for the play-in tournament with the help of Steph Curry and the Warriors. The six play-in games averaged 2.79 million viewers, up 18% compared to last year.

The NBA’s 11-year, $77 billion media deal with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon started this season. After significant criticism of declining viewership last year, the new partners helped deliver 16% viewership growth during the 2025–26 NBA regular season.

However, it hasn’t all been good for the NBA and its new broadcast partners.

NBC made a crucial scorebug blunder Monday during Game 2 of Knicks–Hawks, erroneously adding a timeout for the Knicks in the final six seconds. New York was criticized by NBC broadcasters and outside pundits for not using a timeout before Mikal Bridges missed a potential game-winner, but the timeout did not exist.

Amazon made a similar mistake during the play-in game between the Heat and Hornets last week. That stream was also plagued by technical difficulties, including an outage that lasted for multiple minutes during overtime.