{"id":298872,"date":"2025-11-21T08:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T08:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/298872\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T08:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T08:23:07","slug":"nba-sees-highest-opening-month-viewership-in-more-than-decade-record-social-media-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/298872\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA sees highest opening-month viewership in more than decade, record social media engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"jxTEW Poyse uieav lqtkC HkWF HfYhe kGyAC \">The NBA has announced that national games on NBC\/Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, or ESPN have drawn over 60 million viewers in the first month of the regular season<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">National NBA games being shown on NBC\/Peacock, Amazon Prime Video or ESPN have drawn more than 60 million viewers through the first month of the regular season, the league announced Thursday, noting that is the highest opening total in 15 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">That doesn\u2019t include the 2011-12 season, which opened on Christmas Day \u2014 traditionally one of the biggest viewership days on the NBA calendar. Still, it&#8217;s a very positive sign for the league through the season\u2019s first four weeks and with this being the first of an 11-year, $76 billion deal with its broadcast partners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">NBA content has commanded more than 30 billion views across social media platforms operated by the league and third parties, which is a record for this point in a season. Sales of merchandise on NBAStore.com is up more than 20%, the league added, with those numbers driven in part by who the league calls \u201cnext generation stars\u201d \u2014 like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, Victor Wembanyama, Tyrese Maxey, Cooper Flagg, Jalen Brunson and Luka Doncic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">NBA League Pass has seen subscriptions go up 10%, with time spent viewing games on the platform up 8%, the league said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">And it&#8217;s not just screens seeing good numbers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">In-arena attendance so far is on pace with last season, which was the second-best for attendance in league history with about 97% capacity leaguewide to this point. There are 10 teams that entered Thursday having sold out every home game so far this season \u2014 the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Miami Heat, New York Knicks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns, San Antonio Spurs and Utah Jazz. Other teams, like Atlanta and Charlotte, are up nearly 10% over last year&#8217;s attendance numbers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">AP NBA: <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.apnews.com\/hub\/NBA\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA has announced that national games on NBC\/Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, or ESPN have drawn over 60&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[170980,4225,64,63,134,590,31647,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-298872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-170980","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-basketball","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}