NEW YORK -- The numbers are in, and the NBA says Year 1 of its new television deals were a hit.
The league released numbers for the regular season Wednesday showing that 170 million people in the U.S. watched NBA games across the league's four primary broadcast platforms: ABC/ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, NBC/Peacock and NBA TV.
Those numbers are the league's best in 24 years, the NBA said, and represented an 86% rise over last season.
Prime Video was part of the NBA's television rights package for the first time this season, and NBC/Peacock returned for the first time in a generation. The league signed a new 11-year, $76 billion-plus media rights deal in 2024 that kicked in at the start of this season.
Other highlights of the viewership numbers:
• NBA games across ABC/ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, NBC/Peacock and NBA TV had the highest average viewership in 13 years, up 35% over last season.