ESPN NBA viewership surges to highest levels in years

ESPN is off to one of its strongest NBA starts in more than two decades.

According to the network and Nielsen, ESPN averaged 2.6 million viewers across its first 21 NBA games through Christmas, a 35 percent increase over last season. It’s the network’s second-most-watched start since it began carrying NBA games in 2002, trailing only the 2010-11 season.

The momentum extended to Christmas Day. The NBA announced last week that more than 47 million viewers in the United States watched at least part of the five-game Christmas slate across ESPN and ABC. That marked a 45 percent increase from last year, with the games averaging 5.5 million viewers, up four percent year over year.

The audience growth has been broad. ESPN reports NBA viewership this season is up 47 percent among women and 37 percent among Hispanic audiences.

The surge comes in the first year of the NBA’s new 11-year media rights deal with ESPN, NBC, and Prime Video.

Studio programming has seen similar gains. “Inside the NBA,” now airing on ESPN, is averaging 1.2 million viewers in its first season on the network, a 135 percent increase compared to last year’s regular-season average on TNT. The Christmas Day edition drew 5.1 million viewers, the most-watched regular-season audience in the show’s history.

“NBA Today,” ESPN’s weekday studio show, is also trending upward, averaging 361,000 viewers, a 26 percent increase from this point last season.