Best Opening Weekend Ratings in 25 Years

the East is mostly garbage as usual, but the West has some exciting matchups with HOU-GS, LAC-Den, and LA-Wolves

Knicks-Pistons has been great too

surprisingly, the Boston-Magic game was the most watched game opening weekend even higher than Lakers-Wolves

 

My theory is, if Luka didn't go to the Lakers, the ratings wouldn't be like this.

 

I think the games being fantastic is part of the reason, but certainly not all.

The Luka to the Lakers and Butler to the Warriors trades were gift horses to the NBA. They couldn't have scripted it any better.

I'm curious what would happen to 2nd round ratings if the T-Wolves close out the Lakers.

 

I suspect they were scripted

Rocket River

 

This is very explainable

NBA went too woke - ratings tanked

Trump defeated woke - economy, science, education, government tanked.

Turns out woke was load-bearing

NBA is still woke, therefore all the wokes now have to watch basketball rather than join the military or have jobs.

 

Lesser possibilities. Lot of games watched on cracked streams. Make games more accessible to watch on regular tv, more viewers. Maybe closing out TNT era is some added farewell viewing.

I dont think the games are especially competitive, there's more blowouts than ever lol. But there is some storylines with young up & coming teams, relevance of legacy teams, and old stars still in contention. Great coaches fired days before postseason. And getting to pretend that Kyle Kuzma & Kevin Porter Jr are a team's "professional championship material"

 

https://frontofficesports.com/nba-playoffs-deliver-most-watched-opening-weekend-in-25-years/

ABC games averaged 5.66 million viewers, led by the 6.69 million who watched the defending champion Celtics defeat the Magic. That game, which peaked at 8 million viewers, tipped off at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday.

The second-most-watched game was Timberwolves vs. Lakers, which aired Saturday night on ABC and averaged 5.84 million viewers.

The six-game slate on ESPN platforms, which included the three ABC games and three ESPN games, averaged 4.49 million viewers—the highest in the network’s history. TNT averaged 4.13 million viewers for its two-game slate Sunday night (Heat vs. Cavaliers, Warriors vs. Rockets, up 23% from last year).

Game 1 of Memphis vs. OKC, a 51-point blowout, drew 4.45 million viewers Sunday on ABC (the least watched of ABC’s three-game slate). The Clippers vs. Nuggets averaged 3.64 million Saturday on ESPN.

 

Need to make games locally accessible.