NBA news: League touts massive attendance, viewership wins after successful 2025-26 regular season

The NBA’s 2025-26 regular season wrapped up on Sunday night with a 15-game slate that had 10 teams vying for 10 different potential seeds from playoff berths to play-in spots. The NBA Playoffs are now officially around the corner, but the league had interesting numbers to report amid the constant noise from fans that viewership is a concern.

It felt like just yesterday when things kicked off with the opening night double-head of Thunder-Rockets and Lakers-Warriors. The “NBA Tip-Off” doubleheader delivered the largest audience since 2010 (excluding the 2011 opening games on Christmas holiday) with an average of 5.6 million viewers across NBC and Peacock.

170 million people in the United States watched NBA games across ABC/ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, NBC/Peacock and NBA TV through the regular season. It’s the most viewers for a regular season in 24 years and is up 86 percent vs. last season.

NBA games across ABC/ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, NBC/Peacock averaged 1.78 million viewers, the most in seven years and up 16 percent year over year. When factoring in NBA TV, the NBA experienced the highest average viewership in 13 seasons, up 35 percent year over year.

60 games aired on Amazon’s Prime Video, 58 aired on NBC, 55 aired on ESPN, 41 aired on Peacock, and 23 games aired on ESPN’s ABC network.

There were 57 telecasts this season that averaged at least two million viewers, the most since the 2011-12 regular season and 19 telecasts that averaged at least three million viewers, the most since the 2012-13 regular season.

The NBA regular season drove more than 920 million hours watched, the most since the 2011-12 season and up 27 percent year over year.

In addition to the strong viewership numbers, the league also saw strong attendance numbers from fans this season.

The NBA set a league record for total attendance across a three-season span — from 2023-24 to 2025-26 — exceeding 22.18 million fans in total attendance in team arenas for the third time ever. Regular-season games have drawn a total of just less than 67 million over the past 3 seasons, including 11 different teams reporting sell-outs of every home game.

Only the Washington Wizards and Memphis Grizzlies finished under 90 percent average capacity in arenas, with the Chicago Bulls (829,997), Denver Nuggets (812,868), and Miami Heat (808,063) leading in total attendance for the season.

The league also generated a record 228 billion views on social media this season, up 13 percent year over year, per Videocites.

All in all, it was a highly successful regular season for the NBA, who is eyeing a potentially monster postseason with the rise of players like Victor Wembanyama, Cade Cunningham and Scottie Barnes in addition to the return of Jayson Tatum from a torn Achilles tendon.

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