NBA Viewership Down Just 2% For 2024-25 Season

There was plenty of discussion about the viewership decline in the NBA during the early parts of the 2024-25 campaign. But as the regular season winds down, the numbers show only a slight drop-off in the numbers when compared to last year.

Back in January, the returns on early-season viewership were tough for the league to swallow. There were reports of ratings being down more than 50% in some cases when comparing similar games to the season prior, which was mostly found to be an issue with ESPN-broadcasted contests.

Reports Of NBA Ratings Decline May Have Been Exaggerated

League commissioner Adam Silver gave a couple of reasons for the early-season slump. The World Series matchup of the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers certainly commanded a lot of attention and eyeballs, which took place as the NBA season was getting off of the ground. That event was quickly followed by the 2024 Presidential Election, which was the main focus of the country during the entirety of Election Week and beyond.

Things have rebounded since. While incomparable to the success that the NFL had on the holiday, the slate of NBA games on Christmas Day drew positive results for the league. In the latter half of the season, fans have tuned in for marquee events, which have included Luka Doncic’s meetings with his old team.

Luka Dončić’s return to Dallas averaged 2.26 million viewers Wednesday on ESPN, the network’s most-watched non-Christmas game this year.

However, it didn’t outdraw the Feb. 25 game between the Lakers and Mavs which drew 2.5 million.

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Reports say that his return to Dallas drew 2.26 million viewers, the highest rated non-Christmas Day game for ESPN on the season, which was shy of the 2.5 million that tuned in to the Mavericks vs Lakers game on TNT back in February

According to Front Office Sports, the full season viewership for the NBA is down just 2%. They certainly aren’t the growth returns that the league is looking for, but it is an acceptable figure given how much of a decline there was early in the season.

It will be interesting to monitor the type of viewership that the 2025 Playoffs receive. During the four straight years that the Golden State Warriors met the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals between 2015 and 2018, average viewership was above 10 million. The 2015 version of the matchup saw an average viewership number of 11.6 million, which was the highest number of eyes since the 2001 matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers.

None of the 5 NBA Finals series that have been played since the Covid pandemic have seen a figure higher than 6.6 million average viewers. Last year’s matchup between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks had a return of 5.8 million.