Americans were starving for sports after the Covid-19 Pandemic brought all action to a halt earlier this year. That was clear in the buys for UFC buys on ESPN+ and ratings for NASCAR and golf.
What has been even more clear is that what Americans were really missing were the big four team sports. The NHL, Major League Baseball, and the NBA all returned to some of their best viewership numbers of the season. One network really cashing in is TNT.
Inside the NBA, widely regarded as the league’s best pregame show, pulled in monster numbers on the night the NBA came back. The July 30 edition of the show drew 1.3 million viewers according to Richard Deitsch of The Athletic.
The audience number represents a major victory for TNT. First, that is the largest audience that has watched Inside the NBA since the opening week of the 2018-2019 season. More importantly, 1.3 million people represents an audience increase of 101% compared to what the network was averaging for its pregame show before the pandemic.
Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal reports that plenty of people stuck around to watch the games on Thursday as well. TNT drew 2.1 million pairs of eyeballs for the Pelicans and Jazz. The audience for the battle of the two LA teams later that night was somewhere closer to 3.4 million.
