NBA playoff viewership rising at accelerating rate through Sunday

Key Points:

• The new NBA media rights deal has significantly boosted playoff viewership, with the first round averaging 3.84 million viewers across NBCUniversal, ESPN/ABC, and Amazon Prime Video, marking a 20% increase from last year and the highest average since 1993.
• NBCUniversal's exclusive broadcast rights for first-round games led to a 53% viewership increase compared to last year's non-exclusive cable broadcasts, with NBC delivering the three largest audiences of the weekend, including a peak of 6.3 million viewers for Celtics-Sixers Game 4.
• ESPN experienced a notable decline in viewership after moving some games from ABC to cable, with Sunday’s Spurs-Trail Blazers game down 44% from the previous year’s comparable ABC broadcast, while ABC also saw decreases partly due to a breaking news preemption.
• Amazon Prime Video posted double-digit viewership gains for its NBA tripleheaders despite competing with the NFL Draft, with some games increasing viewership by up to 38% compared to last year’s equivalent windows.
• Changes in Nielsen’s measurement methodology, including the integration of out-of-home viewing and big data from smart TVs, may affect historical comparisons of viewership figures.