Fans appear interested in one-on-one basketball.
The upstart women’s basketball league Unrivaled drew 377,000 viewers on Friday night across TNT and truTV for the semifinals and finals of its inaugural one-on-one tournament. This was the highest audience Unrivaled has drawn yet, surpassing the 312,000 viewers who watched the league’s debut telecast.
The one-on-one tournament came with a $200,000 prize for the winner, league cofounder Napheesa Collier.
According to Sports Media Watch, Unrivaled is averaging 190,000 viewers per window (and 227,000 if you take out the games that are exclusive to truTV). The recent one-on-one ratings come with the caveat that Nielsen boosted the formula for out-of-home viewership earlier this month, making apples-to-apples comparisons of past events more challenging.
In 2023, the year before Caitlin Clark entered the WNBA, that league averaged 505,000 viewers on national regular-season games that aired on ABC, ESPN, and CBS.
Front Office Sports reported earlier this week that there were discussions during NBA All-Star Weekend in the Bay Area centered on holding a one-on-one tournament during next year’s All-Star break in Los Angeles—with a prize of $1 million.
Longtime NBA personality Rachel Nichols polled several players—including Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kyrie Irving, James Harden, and Anthony Edwards—who all indicated they’d be interested in competing in the event.
