• by Wayne Friedman , April 16, 2025

The NBA 2024-2025 regular season has earned TV networks $636.6 million in national TV advertising through mid-April -- results that are virtually flat compared to the same period a year ago ($648.1 million), according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage.

This closely follows average national TV viewership on those networks, with a slight 2% decline to a Nielsen average 1.53 million viewers on TNT, ESPN, ABC, ESPN 2 and truTV, according to Guggenheim Securities and Sports Business Journal. 

Since 2020 the league has been fairly steady in regular-season NBA viewership -- coming in at 1.6 million in 2019-2020 and dipping to 1.4 million the next season, then rising to 1.6 million from 2021 through 2024.

This season so far, ESPN is down 7% (1.32 million viewers), with TNT/truTV off 8% (1.25 million) and ABC up 10% (for ten games so far) to 2.7 million.

TNT/truTV has been estimated to have pulled in $281.1 million in national TV ad spend so far from 11,260 airings, with ESPN/ESPN2 at $189 million (16,250 airings) and ABC at $160.1 million (2,010 airings).

The biggest ad categories are quick-service restaurants, at $47.1 million; automobiles, at $37.7 million; and auto/home insurance, at $31.8 million.