{"id":395874,"date":"2026-01-08T20:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/395874\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T20:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:45:07","slug":"espns-regular-season-nba-games-averaging-2-6-million-viewers-through-christmas-2nd-ever-best-start-wral-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/395874\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN&#8217;s regular-season NBA games averaging 2.6 million viewers through Christmas, 2nd-ever best start :: WRAL.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) \u2014 ESPN has had one of its most-viewed starts to the NBA regular season since it started to carry games in 2002.<\/p>\n<p>According to the network and Nielsen, ESPN averaged 2.6 million viewers in its first 21 games through Christmas, a 35% increase from last season and the second most-watched in a full season. The numbers for this season only trail 2010-11.<\/p>\n<p>Viewership is up 47% among women and 37% among Hispanic audiences. This is the first year of the NBA&#8217;s 11-year media rights deal with ESPN, NBC and Prime Video.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN&#8217;s NBA studio shows have also experienced increased viewership. \u201cInside the NBA\u201d is averaging 1.2 million in its first season on ESPN, up 135% compared to last year&#8217;s regular-season average on TNT. The Christmas Day edition averaged 5.1 million, the show&#8217;s most-watched regular season audience.<\/p>\n<p>The Dec. 25 edition was also on ABC with the crew on for all five games throughout the day and prime time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNBA Today,\u201d ESPN&#8217;s weekday studio show, is averaging 361,000, a 26% increase from this time last year.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) \u2014 ESPN has had one of its most-viewed starts to the NBA regular season since&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[174498,191413,160359,2724,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-395874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ap-entertainment","9":"tag-ap-media","10":"tag-ap-sports","11":"tag-associated-press","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}