How the Detroit Pistons compare to national TV ratings in the NBA

Cable Ratings for Wednesday

(Editors note: All television rating statistics were provided by TV By the Numbers.)

As the first game of ESPN’s double header, the Pistons averaged 876,000 viewers, according to TV By The Numbers and Nielson ratings, which are the standard for cable ratings shown to potential advertisers, as well as the NBA and ESPN. When people talk about the NBA Ratings being down 15% this year, they are referring to the Nielson ratings.

According to Spotted Ratings, “Nielsen ratings come from tracking the viewing habits of a sample of about 20,000 households, calibrated to properly represent the demographic makeup of the TV-owning population.”

Alongside the total number of viewers that Nielson estimates, they also give a rating for people watching between the ages of 18-49 that have televisions (instead of the population as a whole). This number is important to cable networks because it is often their target demographic, which holds true for both ESPN as well as the NBA.

Pistons-Nets came in with a .3 rating for 18-49, which means that the Nielson Company has found that 0.3% of adults between the ages of 18-49 with televisions tuned into the game.

For reference, the rating of .3 trailed the Houston Rockets and Portland Trailblazers game that followed, as well as “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” which both came in with a score of .5.

Compared to the night-cap of ESPN’s basketball double header, the Rockets-Trailblazers had an average of 1,152,000 viewers, outpacing the Pistons-Nets game by about 276,000 viewers.

The Pistons and Nets numbers were very close to those of TNT’s broadcast of “All Elite Wrestling,” which matched their rating of .3. AEW trailed the NBA in viewership by only a 48,000 average during the competing live programming.

But how do those numbers compare to the rest of the league?