The NBA got the Christmas gift it was hoping for Wednesday.
In a Boxing Day announcement, the league said it posted its most-watched Christmas Day slate in five years with an average of 5.25 million viewers across its five games on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, Disney+ and ESPN+. That reportedly adds up to a viewership increase of 84% against last year’s Christmas.
The biggest game of the day was predictably the one between the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors, or LeBron James and Stephen Curry. That game saw an average 7.76 million viewers with a peak of 8.32 million, the most-watched game in that same five-year span and a 499% increase from last year’s window (which was between the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat).
The game was a fun one, with the Lakers blowing a double-digit lead in the final minutes, capped off by a game-tying Curry 3-pointer with eight seconds left, then winning on an Austin Reaves layup.
The NBA will gladly take all of those numbers, considering it is currently fighting to defend at least part of its hold on Christmas from the most powerful league in the world.
How did the NBA do against the NFL on Christmas?
The NFL has been attempting to replicate its success with Thanksgiving for a few years now by instituting a slate of games on Christmas, no matter what inconvenient day of the week the holiday falls upon.
This year, that day was Wednesday, requiring the league to have four of its teams play on Saturday the previous week to give them at least four days’ rest. It still added up to three games in 11 days and some players weren’t happy, though they and the fans at least got a Beyoncé concert out of it.
This year was also unusual because it was the first time the NFL handed the slate off to Netflix, having already found success (or at least money) by giving “Thursday Night Football” to a streamer at Amazon.
That combination worked out to an average of over 24 million viewers, Netflix announced Thursday, with a total of 65 million viewers in the U.S. across the two games. The NFL also said Wednesday that:
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more than 200 countries watched at least part of its Kansas City Chiefs-Pittsburgh Steelers game.
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that the Chiefs-Steelers game was already Netflix’s second-most popular “Live” title to date.
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nearly one third of Netflix’s global concurrents were watching Chiefs-Steelers.
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Netflix topped the peak concurrent viewers of any Christmas in the past four years.
For reference, last year’s NFL Christmas, which was on a Monday, drew an average of 29 million viewers across three games, trouncing the NBA’s 2.85 million that year.
When LeBron James proclaimed, “I love the NFL, but Christmas is our day,” after Wednesday’s Lakers victory, he was voicing what many in the NBA hope to achieve or preserve. They can at least say this year was a step in the right direction after some bleak outcomes over the past few years.
