Cavs Lead NBA in Local TV Ratings Growth, While Big Markets Fade

May 1, 2025

While big-market NBA teams continue to flounder both on the court and in front of the television, the Cavaliers are doing exactly the opposite — and fans are showing up.

According to a new report from Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal, the Cavs were one of just eight NBA teams to post year-over-year increases in local viewership this season, and they led the way.

They were joined at the top by Portland, Boston, Houston and Detroit, giving this year’s TV winners a distinctly small-market, overachieving flavor.

This comes after Puck’s John Ourand reported that local ratings were down 13% across the NBA. SBJ’s updated figures, based on Nielsen data and accounting for 28 of the league’s 30 teams, show that the drop wasn’t quite as steep — closer to 9%. Still, that decline mostly comes from the league’s heavy hitters.

Philadelphia and Chicago — two of the five largest media markets in the U.S. — saw the most alarming drops: 41% and a staggering 58%, respectively. Neither team made the playoffs, and both fell well short of preseason expectations. The Bulls’ numbers also took a hit due to a carriage dispute with Comcast, the biggest cable provider in the area.

Meanwhile, Cleveland just kept doing Cleveland things. Exceeding expectations. Playing tough. Winning. That’s the formula for bringing casual fans back into the fold, and it’s exactly what the Cavs did.

“Local ratings are very much driven by which teams that year exceeded expectations and had all the casual fans come in to join the ride,” said Gregg Liebman, head of research at Playfly Sports, via Friend.

And it wasn’t just the Cavs. The Rockets, Pistons, Thunder and Trail Blazers — all smaller market clubs — also saw significant viewership spikes by simply being better than people expected. Portland, for example, improved its viewership by 109% after moving to a free, over-the-air broadcast model, despite winning just 36 games.

But the NBA is starting to realize that local linear broadcasts are a shaky long-term bet. Traditional cable viewership is slipping, and more teams are turning to streaming, which, according to the report, saw a 30% year-over-year increase in engagement. Fans who streamed games stayed tuned in 30 minutes longer on average than those watching on cable.

“Right now, the default is that every national game is on linear and some of those games are simulcast on streaming,” NBA EVP of media distribution Scott Kaufman-Ross told SBJ. “We actually thought about it in the reverse … because we think that’s what the next 11 years are going to look like.”

With the NBA reportedly considering a nationalized, streaming-first package of local rights — possibly with Amazon or another tech giant — the future of watching basketball may look a lot more like Netflix and a lot less like cable boxes.

Until then, one thing’s clear: teams like the Cavaliers are giving their fans a reason to watch — and unlike some of the NBA’s marquee franchises, those fans are showing up in full force.