This is the most popular the NBA has been in a while. Last summer’s free agency period certainly helped and you could make the argument that the NBA is the second most popular league in the U.S. behind the NFL. Ratings for this year’s playoffs substantiate the rise in the appeal of the League…
The NBA attracted plenty of attention all offseason, and that’s carried over into the real games.
Those months of free-agent intrigue fed into robust television ratings in the regular season and now into the playoffs. Viewership for the first round was up 30 percent from last year.
“We actually couldn’t be more pleased,” Commissioner David Stern said on a conference call Monday. “We’re actually a little surprised, but pleasantly.”
First-round games on ABC, ESPN and TNT were watched by an average of 4.15 million people, up from fewer than 3.2 million last year.
The big jump came on top of already-strong ratings. In 2007, the first round averaged fewer than 2.7 million viewers.
To this point of the playoffs, TNT has drawn the highest average rating ever for games on cable. The network’s 23 games averaged a 2.7 rating – representing the percentage of American homes with televisions tuned in – easily eclipsing the previous high of 2.3 in 2009.
ESPN’s first-round ratings were the highest since it began televising the playoffs in 2003, and ABC’s were the best since 2004.
Read more about the playoff ratings via AP on NBA.com
