The final viewership numbers for the NBA’s five Christmas Day games were even better than initially expected, according to the league and ESPN on Monday.
An average of 5.335 million viewers watched the five games across 13 hours on ESPN platforms, based on Nielsen data. This was a slight increase over last week’s early projections and made it the most-watched Christmas lineup of NBA games since 2019.
Viewership was up by 87% compared to last Christmas’ games, with some of the time slots showing huge increases over the previous year. The San Antonio-New York game, featuring Victor Wembanyama’s Christmas debut for the Spurs, was the most-watched Christmas noon game in 13 years, averaging just under 5 million viewers, a 101% increase from last year.
The most-watched game was the 8 p.m. Eastern matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State, a game featuring LeBron James vs. Stephen Curry.
It averaged 7.9 million viewers and peaked at nearly 8.5 million viewers toward the end, an increase of 511% compared to the same Christmas time slot last year.
The late game between Phoenix and Denver, starting at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, set a record for that time slot, averaging just under 3.9 million viewers.
Philadelphia’s win over Boston averaged 5.24 million viewers, and the Dallas-Minnesota game averaged 4.45 million viewers. Both games saw slight increases from the same time slots in 2023.
Thanks to the strong Christmas Day numbers, NBA viewership on ESPN’s platforms is up by 5% compared to last season, according to Nielsen.
