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The NBA’s TV viewership is up significantly for nationally televised games so far this season.
In a press release, the league touted a 92% year-over-year increase in viewership over the first two weeks, hitting its highest levels since 2013. The NBA in part credits its new “Tap to Watch” feature as part of how that big number comes to be. But it’s probably even simpler than that.
NBA viewership is up because there are more games on broadcast TV.
Granted, “Tap To Watch” and its ability to jump between games within the NBA app is an effective answer to preseason concerns around the number of services required to watch all national games this year. At the time, the concerns from the likes of Charles Barkley and others appeared to be overblown – primarily because while the schedule has more streaming games, it also added more broadcast games airing on NBC.
To that point, adding NBC to the mix was one of the biggest draws of the league’s lucrative new TV deal because of the increased accessibility it provides over a cable network like TNT. And we’re seeing that bear out already in the early weeks of the 2025-26 season.
The NBA’s Successful TV Rights Swap
In the new media rights agreement, the league’s TNT and NBA TV national games were effectively traded for NBC, Peacock and Amazon Prime Video exposure – a net win in terms of potential viewership, even if it were just a one-for-one shift to park all of those games on NBC.
While there was regular coverage around the differences between broadcast and cable audiences when that shift first occurred and more recently, initial ratings declines going from broadcast and cable TV to streaming, this is the opposite dynamic. As cable viewership decreases, Big Four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC) have maintained importance as TV’s top networks by audience and ad deliveries. And that’s directly attributable to their abilities to reach a large number of viewers with live sports.
Peacock and Amazon Prime Video also elevate the importance of game inventory that was previously more difficult for audiences to tune into on NBA TV. The network has not been part of most basic cable packages and the game presentation was primarily either the local home broadcast feed or an occasional “player’s only” showcase.
Amazon Prime Video, meanwhile, has over 130 million U.S. subscribers, global distribution and worked to event-ize its NBA games into premium products. The same goes for Peacock, too, which has 41 million paid subscribers in the U.S. Adding those two entities to NBC’s increased reach creates a clear and immediate boost in terms of raw viewership, before even considering the productions themselves.
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Hat Tip For Tap To Watch
To the NBA’s credit, Tap To Watch also helps.
For those watching the NBA within its app ecosystem, the feature does help remove barriers to watching a multitude of games around the league.
In the past, viewers would have to log into each service separately, jump around and hope they weren’t blacked out locally. But Tap To Watch does simplify that process across both national games and many local broadcasts in a way that feels like a more unified product. It also cuts down on discovery time issues, which are becoming an increasing headache for consumers across the streaming landscape for sports and non-sports programming alike.
Though all of that is true, it’s more part of the larger equation.
Fans only have so much time available, and casual viewers (whom the NBA and other leagues need) are more likely to spend their limited viewing hours watching a game that their local NBC affiliate or Amazon tells them is important. NBA diehards will happily and regularly utilize the Tap To Watch feature, of course. NBC and Amazon (and Peacock) prompts telling/directing viewing is what hooks in someone without a strong affinity for watching NBA games every night.
The NFL’s TV success in the U.S. leans heavily on broadcast, ESPN coverage and a heavy promo load getting viewers invested in watching the larger product no matter who’s playing. It’s important because it’s on a major network or streaming service, and because it’s the NFL. The league has successfully told an entire country that every game is important.
That’s not where the NBA is starting from, especially given its much longer schedule (82 games versus the NFL’s 17). But that’s where the NBA could eventually move toward if it is able to successfully sell the idea of importance via a larger broadcast footprint, more exposure for all teams that isn’t limited to big markets, and event-ized streaming games.
The pieces are already in place for all of that, though. And if given time to fine-tune it all, the NBA may be on the verge of some truly impressive growth as a TV and entertainment product.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johncassillo/2025/11/14/nba-viewership-predictably-grows-with-more-broadcast-games/
