The NBA Can Compete With the NFL—If Social Video Views Count

The NFL has successfully started to take over Christmas from the NBA—and overwhelming television and streaming viewership numbers show that it has happened.

Despite the NBA recording an 87% year-over-year increase in viewers on Christmas this year, its 5.34 million viewership average on ABC and ESPN was still trounced by the 26.5 million U.S. viewership for the NFL on its Netflix debut.

But the viewership gap wasn’t exactly a shock. The NFL draws tens of millions of viewers every week even during the regular season, while, nowadays, the NBA draws those figures only during the NBA Finals.

However, given the NBA’s 82-game regular season, it does provide significantly more content than the NFL. Lengthy seasons can be detrimental for leagues—not just the NBA, but NHL and MLB as well—as they devalue each game. But the volume allows the NBA to maintain a level of cultural relevancy and drive more social content, and that showed on Christmas.

Data provided by Videocites, a social media tracking and analytics company, shows a much smaller gap between the NFL and NBA compared to TV and streaming viewership.

The data shows that from Dec. 25 to Dec. 27, the NFL drew 921 million video views, about 14% more than the 811 million views the NBA delivered. The NFL was able to do this despite streaming two games during about a seven-hour run time compared to the NBA, which had its first game tip-off at noon ET with the final game ending around 1 a.m. ET.

However, a deeper look into the Videocites numbers shows slightly more than half of the video views generated by the NFL were based on the 12-minute halftime performance of Beyoncé (464 million). The games themselves generated 457 million video views.

The NBA’s run time also allowed for significantly more uploads than the NFL (12,654 vs. 6,112, including the NFL halftime show). 

The numbers show the NFL has cemented its place on Christmas, but the NBA remains a cultural fixture during the holiday as well. However, it does showcase how the NBA must continue creating ways to build and monetize its strong social media content.

The NBA maintains a healthy advantage over every other American sports league in the social space. It has nearly three times as many Instagram followers as the next-highest league (the NFL), and is also ahead on X/Twitter, TikTok, and Youtube.

In the meantime, despite the viewership gaps, the volume of content likely explains why the NBA was able to sign an 11-year media-rights deal worth $77 billion last year, not too far off from the 11-year, $110 billion deal the NFL signed in 2020.