76ers-Knicks Draws Record 7.7 Million Viewers for NBA Tip-Off

The Philadelphia 76ers and the New York Knicks gave NBC the biggest opening night audience in NBA history on Tuesday. Their game averaged 7.71 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, NBC Sports said on Thursday, October 22, making it the most watched NBA Tip-Off primetime game ever. The audience peaked at 9.1 million viewers between 9:45 and 10:00 p.m. Eastern, as Philadelphia closed out a 106-100 win at Madison Square Garden.

The numbers beat the old marks by clear margins. Tuesday's early game rose 32 percent from last year's early primetime game, Rockets against Thunder, which drew 5.9 million. It also finished 5 percent above the previous record of 7.3 million for Heat against Celtics in 2010 on TBS and TNT. That 2010 game was LeBron James's debut for Miami. Sixteen years later, the new record was set by James's debut for another new team, Philadelphia, on the night the Knicks raised their championship banner.

The whole night set records

The two-game primetime doubleheader, 76ers-Knicks followed by Thunder-Spurs, averaged 6.41 million viewers, the most watched NBA Tip-Off night ever and up 14 percent from last year. The previous doubleheader record was 5.7 million in 2010. Thunder-Spurs averaged 4.8 million on its own, the second most watched late primetime Tip-Off game ever, behind last year's Warriors-Lakers game at 5.1 million.

The day game did its part too. Celtics-Pistons averaged 2.5 million viewers in a special daytime slot, which NBC called the most watched weekday afternoon regular season game ever, holidays excluded. Across the first tripleheader ever shown on one network, the three games averaged 5.1 million viewers.

Sports Media Watch added one wider mark. Outside the lockout-delayed 2011-12 season, which opened on Christmas Day, the 76ers-Knicks audience was the league's largest on opening night on record, and its largest non-Christmas regular season audience since March 1999, when NBC averaged 8.37 million for Lakers-Jazz.

How the count works

The figures combine Nielsen Big Data and Panel measurement for the television audience with Adobe Analytics data for streaming. Sports Media Watch broke the 7.71 million into about 5.98 million on linear television and 1.7 million streaming. The site also noted that out-of-home viewing was not counted the same way in 2010, and that Nielsen has changed its method in recent years, so the 2010 record would likely look bigger under today's count. The record stands under the current method, and it is the method every network now sells against.

Why it matters for the league

This is the start of the NBA's return to NBC after more than two decades away from the network. The league bet that putting James's first game in a Philadelphia uniform, against the defending champions, on their own banner night, would pull a crowd. It did, on television and on streaming at the same time. Opening week continues with a short two-game slate on Thursday and a full weekend schedule, and the league now has a ratings bar that the rest of the season will be measured against.