Childhood buddies Jayson Tatum of the Celtics and Matthew Tkachuk of the Panthers (below) both won titles this year. getty images
It was a tale of two directions for NHL and NBA postseason viewership this spring.
Buoyed by strong hockey markets such as New York making deeper runs, the audience for the Stanley Cup Playoffs was the best in 28 years. Games across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS and truTV averaged 1.54 million viewers — second all-time behind only the 1996 postseason across Fox and ESPN networks. That audience was up 26% from last season, when the Stanley Cup Final was exclusively on cable TV for the first time in decades and popular teams went out early.
RELATED: Stanley Cup Final Game 7 hits five-year high for league
This year also saw TNT Sports deploy an aggressive strategy of alt-casts on truTV during the NHL playoffs. Of the 40 hockey playoff games with primary coverage on TBS or TNT, 33 of those carried alt-casts on truTV — and many accounted for a significant portion of each game’s overall audience. It’s part of a broader strategy to make truTV a sports destination beyond what has only been March Madness early-round games in years past. The cable network also had a number of NBA alt-casts in the postseason; it will play a part in Warner Bros. Discovery’s new Big East deal; and it even has a dedicated half-hour “TNT Sports Update” each evening (an effort that began early in the spring).
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This was the third year of a media rights pact among the NHL, WBD and Disney.
Meanwhile, the NBA Playoffs were down 12% this year across ABC, ESPN, TNT, truTV and NBA TV compared to 2023. This year still was well above the pandemic-influenced years of 2021 (when they went deep into July) and 2020 (from the Disney bubble in the fall). But excluding those two years, the NBA Playoffs average of 4.53 million viewers was lower than any postseason dating to at least 2010.
RELATED: NBA Finals viewership down 3%, while playoffs drop 12% overall
A key factor in that was a dearth of big-name stars making runs. This was the first postseason without LeBron James, Steph Curry or Kevin Durant making it past the first round since 2005.
Regardless of the drop in viewership, ABC, ESPN and TNT were the most-viewed networks across all of TV among adults under 50 on 42 of 43 nights during NBA postseason coverage. NBA playoff games also accounted for 45 of the top 50 TV programs in May among adults under 50.
The NBA is expected to triple its media rights fee when deals are signed in the near future.
