On Friday, the National Basketball Association’s New Orleans Pelicans fell to the defending champions, the Denver Nuggets, in a regular-season matchup that saw star Nikola Jokic score 27 points, while contributing 14 assists and 10 rebounds.
While Pelicans fans couldn’t enjoy a victory, they could relish the fact that they could tune in without the need of a pay-TV regional sports network.
Guess what? The ratings for the Pelicans-Nuggets matchup on local television topped that of the NBA finals in June 2023 in New Orleans.
According to Gray Television-owned FOX affiliate WVUE-8, the Pelicans-Nuggets game earned a 7.4 rating in New Orleans, translating to an average 50,000 households tuning in to watch the matchup.
Viewership peaked between 9:45pm-10pm Central, when 66,000 households turned to WVUE-8 to watch the game.
“This is a great first step in this partnership with the Pelicans,” said WVUE Vice President and General Manager Mikel Schaefer. “I’m very proud of our broadcast and happy to be able to make these games available for everyone in our area to watch.”
The game marked the first Friday night broadcast of a Pelicans game on WVUE, which was simulcast on WVUE-8.2, the local Bounce TV digital multicast network channel for New Orleans.
And, the Times-Picayune reports, the 7.4 rating “slightly eclipsed” the 7.24 rating the 2023 NBA Finals averaged in New Orleans. It also “blew away” the ratings the Pelicans saw on Bally Sports, the newspaper says.
“Generally, it is exceptionally rare for the Pelicans to exceed a 2.0 rating when their games are being shown on Bally Sports,” it reports.
HAWKS FLY ON FREE-TO-AIR TV
Gray Television is also celebrating a strong over-the-air debut of Atlanta Hawks games on Friday evenings, as January 12 saw the NBA team’s home game against the Indiana Pacers draw strong ratings on Gray’s WANF-46, the market’s CBS affiliate, and WPCH-17 “Peachtree TV.”
According to Gray, the Hawks-Pacers telecast beat the season average ratings of every other NBA game on Comscore-rated cable in Atlanta so far this season — out-delivering game averages on TNT (+73%), ESPN (+69%), and ESPN 2 (+3,530%).
The broadcast also won the night head-to-head against two games at the same time-period on cable by 153% and 108%, respectively, and was the highest ComScore-rated Friday night game of the season.
“It’s so exciting to see so many people enjoyed the Hawks return to broadcast television,” said Gray Television/Atlanta VP/General Manager Erik Schrader (pictured, above). “Friday nights are a very busy night in Atlanta and it’s clear that a lot of people chose to spend it watching the Hawks over free television! Hopefully last Friday was the first of what will become a family tradition over the next few months.”
