NBA Tip-Off Hits 5.6 Million Viewers on NBC, Biggest Audience in More Than 10 Years and Up 87% From Last Year

The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Golden State Warriors weren’t the only winners of this year’s NBA tip-off. Airing its first NBA games since 2002, NBC and Peacock earned a strong audience of 5.6 million average viewers for its broadcast of both games on Tuesday night.

That number, based on linear measurement from Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics, is not only an 87% improvement from last year’s NBA tip-off, which hit 3 million viewers on TNT, but the biggest audience the doubleheader has seen in more than 10 years. No season opener has reached those heights since 2012 — or 2010 if you exclude 2011’s unusual Christmas Day tip-off. And given that the 2010 games included LeBron James’ debut with the Miami Heat, it’s impressive that NBC’s telecast came so close to that record.

The 5.6 million total represents the average number of people watching at any given moment of the broadcast. When broken down into shorter segments, Tuesday’s doubleheader peaked at 7.1 million viewers between 10:45 and 11 p.m. ET, during which the Thunder beat the Houston Rockets by one point in double overtime. Averaging 5.9 million viewers overall, the Thunder-Rockets game’s viewership was certainly also boosted by the fact that it was Kevin Durant’s debut as a Houston player and marked a face-off with the team he started his career with. The Warriors-Lakers game averaged 5.1 million viewers overall.

Additionally, NBC Sports achieved its largest non-NFL and non-Olympics simulstream audience ever with an average minute audience of 1 million viewers from a combination of Peacock and NBC Sports Digital.