Record setting! Lots of eyeballs were glued to the 2023 NBA Draft.

The 2023 NBA Draft- Highest ever viewership


The 2023 NBA Draft was the most-watched NBA Draft ever on any network, ESPN announced Friday. Here’s what you need to know:
* The first round averaged 4,928,000 viewers across ESPN and ABC, which was a 24 percent increase from last year’s first round on both platforms.
* The broadcast peaked with 6,085,000 viewers in the 8 p.m. ET quarter-hour.
* This year’s draft included a player considered a generational talent in French phenom Victor Wembanyama, who was selected with the No. 1 pick by the Spurs.

The Athletic’s instant analysis:

What made this year special

What’s the reason behind the big viewership pop? (Last year’s first round averaged 3,989,000 viewers for context.)
Here’s an informed guess: First, you can’t discount the impact of having the NBA Draft on over-the-air ABC. It makes a big difference in potential households considering the NBA Draft started airing on both ESPN and ABC in 2021. So does out-of-home viewing, which was introduced by Nielsen in 2020 and has increased the viewership for all sporting events given sports have been historically undercounted.

Clearly, there was intense curiosity about Wembanyama because of his unicorn status, even if we knew where he was going. (The league should really push his games this year.) There was also some uncertainty with the Nos. 2 and 3 picks and always keep in mind this is a television show at the end of the day.
The trades leading into the NBA Draft — from Bradley Beal to Chris Paul to Marcus Smart — likely gave it some extra juice as well. Add it all up, and you’ve got record viewership. [/b]

Richard Deitsch

My Thoughts:


That’s good news for the Sponsors who bought into it and better news for the NBA and ESPN future forward.

However, record viewership notwithstanding, the coverage in my opinion lacked in comparison to past drafts.

NBA TV’s pre-draft coverage was over saturated with stats and fill
Verbiage that was less than compelling.

Host Jared Greenberg’s tendency to morph into story telling mode is impressive for colleagues grading his performance but less than impressive to the viewers who couldn’t care less about another players 2nd cousin who is famous for something other than basketball.
I will say that Greenberg has come quite a ways from his NBA radio days where he would go out of his way to debate players like Rick Fox and others on the merits of basketball.

NBA TV also would be better served if they would let us know who is sitting on the set opining about what’s about to take place.
It may be a former player or it may not so it’s probably a good idea to caption key the person speaking with name etc. beneath him/her
I’m pretty familiar with most talking heads who’s generally are on set but even I didn’t know some of the folks who were providing their insight on Thursday night.

ESPN, for some reason appears to hire/subcontract talent that are either unfamiliar to most viewers or someone like a Michael Wilbon whose spot would be better represented by a former player (see TNT).

Thursday night not only was Wilbon on set but the suits also thought it was a good idea to also install a former Tennessee Vol from Women’s basketball that never played professionally and who may be vaguely familiar at best.

Andrea Carter who strings for ESPN and covers SEC football and basketball was given a prominent role on Thursday night.
I’m not questioning her talent but out of all the well know woman basketball players, the best they could come up with was an Andrea Carter?
Again, I’m not saying that she isn’t worthy when It comes to talking collegiate sports. Thats not the point. Viewers are comfortable with who they know and are familiar with. It’s a perception game and ESPN knows better.

There was one awkward moment where Carter inferred that JJ Reddick was an average shooter and it appeared that JJ was a bit unnerved by it.
JJ is not a Hall a farmer but nor was he just an average shooter.

Later we learned from JJ via tweet that it was all in fun and they had talked about it before the broadcast. Ha Ha. Very clever.
I do take issue with that because some, not all fans took what was going as an a honest yet misguided opinion by an analyst that they barely knew about a player they were very familiar with that was a top tier shooter throughout his career.

Some may disagree but set-ups like that are unnecessary. It’s fake and doesn’t serve a real purpose.
There was more than enough material and information to cover during the draft without resorting to that kind of nonsense.

Personally, I am not a fan of JJ Reddick but he does do a very good job as an analyst-when he stays focused on the task.
Too many times I have seen him go off and appear angry in what comes off as debate baiting.
He’s no exception. Just like others like Perk, Richard Jefferson and others JJ is being encouraged, better yet, dictated to do so by the powers that be.

I haven’t seen any studies on this/him that indicate either way but I don’t think it serves him well nor do I think a good portion of the audience is buying it.

The record setting ratings indicate that the viewers interest is at an all time high.

It may appear that it contradicts what I found to be some of the broadcasts lowlights.

Not necessarily. The broadcast peaked at over 6 million viewers which was great.
As indicated in the article above over the air broadcasts as well as ESPN and other platforms increased its availability as well.

Improving the broadcast in suggested ways could possibly grow that number significantly.
Obviously the popularity of the game has a little something to do with the increasing interest as well.

Continued improvements to the game and the broadcasts will increase the interest which in turn creates a better viewing experience as well as increased revenue.
Win win.
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