NBA sweeps Top 10 sporting events in early May ratings
Credit: imagn images via Reuters Connect There has been enough debate about NBA ratings this season to fill an election cycle over the past year. But with the playoffs upon us, the league has to be feeling great about its current positioning in the greater sports landscape. The NBA has seen ratings go up across the postseason amongst its partners at NBC, ESPN, and Amazon.
Increased primetime network exposure has certainly provided a lift, but cable and streaming numbers have been solid as well. This followed a strong regular season as well. There have been plenty of skeptics that have been claiming the sky is falling around the NBA for a long time and trying to draw the league into a feud with Major League Baseball over which sport is superior.
However, the most recent numbers definitively prove that the NBA is in a very healthy place when it comes to national television viewership. In Nielsen ratings from May 4-10, the NBA swept the entire Top 10 of most-watched sports telecast according to a tweet from Yahoo’s Shlomo Sprung. It was topped by Game 4 in the Spurs-Timberwolves western conference semifinal series drawing 6.
59 million viewers on NBC. #NBA claimed the 10 most-watched sports telecasts in the U. S.
for the week of May 4-10, per @nielsen , with Sunday’s Spurs-Wolves Game 4 drawing 6. 59 million to NBC. #NHL claimed eight of the top 25, PGA Tour on CBS had one spot, #WNBA ’s Wings-Fever game ranked 14th, NASCAR on FS1… pic.