A budding rivalry between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder proved to be the best viewership draw of Christmas Day for ESPN and ABC.<\/p>\n
The Spurs\u2019 win over the Thunder averaged 6.71 million viewers<\/a> across ESPN and ABC in the 2:30 p.m. ET window. It was the most-watched second game of Christmas Day since a Cleveland Cavaliers-Golden State Warriors game at the height of that rivalry in 2017. The window saw a substantial 53% year-over-year increase in viewership compared to the Minnesota Timberwolves-Dallas Mavericks game in 2024<\/a> (4.38 million viewers).<\/p>\n Earlier in the day, the noon ET Cleveland Cavaliers-New York Knicks game averaged 6.37 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, and the \u201cDunk the Halls\u201d altcast on ESPN2 and Disney Channel. It was the largest audience for a noon Christmas Day game on records, and increased viewership from last year\u2019s Spurs-Knicks game in the same window by 30% (4.91 million viewers).<\/p>\n Notably, the two early-afternoon games were the most-watched of the entire Christmas Day slate for the NBA. That\u2019s a noted departure from past years, when the primetime matchup generally drives the largest viewership. Perhaps the shift has something to do with the NFL scheduling its two best Christmas games during the late afternoon and evening.<\/p>\n Later in the day, the 5 p.m. ET game between the Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors averaged 6.1 million viewers across ESPN and ABC, the most in that timeslot since 2019. Viewership for that game was up 18% versus last year\u2019s 76ers-Celtics contest (5.16 million viewers).<\/p>\n The primetime game between the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers averaged 5.4 million viewers on ESPN and ABC, a noted downturn compared to last year\u2019s Lakers-Warriors game, which averaged 7.76 million viewers but did not compete with the NFL.<\/p>\n Finally, the Minnesota Timberwolves-Denver Nuggets 10:30 p.m. ET nightcap averaged 3.6 million viewers, which is the second most-watched game in that late Christmas window on record, behind only last year\u2019s Nuggets-Suns matchup (3.84 million viewers).<\/p>\n It should be noted, this year\u2019s viewership figures include Nielsen\u2019s expanded out-of-home viewing measurements, as well as the new Big Data + Panel methodology, which last year\u2019s figures did not. Both changes have served to increase the audiences for live sports compared to prior years.<\/p>\n No doubt, the NFL clearly ate into some of the NBA\u2019s audience during the primetime hours. But the strength of the league\u2019s daytime matchups helped propel those windows to new highs, and could signal a shift in strategy for the NBA when it comes to its Christmas Day lineup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A budding rivalry between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder proved to be the best viewership…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,25321,2528,1007],"class_list":["post-509382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-nba-christmas-day","tag-nba-on-abc","tag-nba-on-espn"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115818627641804860","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}