NEW YORK—They may have fallen short in the Western Conference finals, but the Oklahoma City Thunder topped the list of most-watched NBA teams in 2025-26, drawing 1.8 million viewers per game in the regular season, according to Nielsen viewing data.
The No. 2 team was the Los Angeles Lakers—the team that boasted the most-watched player, per Nielsen, in LeBron James—followed by the Eastern Conference champion New York Knicks.
Another participant in this week’s NBA Finals, San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama, trailed James as the league’s second-most-watched player.
Nielsen’s Spring 2026 “Tops of Sports’ report also noted double-digit growth in viewership across pro basketball (up 27%), NHL hockey (25%), auto racing (44%) and golf (12%*), fueled by new streaming and broadcast options, the massive popularity of global stars and changing ways that fans follow their favorite teams.
More specifically, the NBA’s average audience for regular-season games was up 27%, with the early rounds of the playoffs seeing a 10% bump. The league benefited from new media-rights deals that helped it reach younger viewers on streamers Prime Video, Peacock and ESPN Unlimited while still drawing larger audiences on broadcasters ABC and NBC and cable network ESPN.
The NHL is also experiencing a major boost, with average regular-season viewership up 25% to 540,000 viewers per game, and the first round of the playoffs up 77%, to 1.2 million viewers. The growth was bolstered by significant cultural moments involving hockey, such as the gold medal wins by the U.S. men’s and women’s ice hockey teams at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, Prime Video’s hit series “Off-Campus” and drama series “Heated Rivalry” on HBO Max, which notched nearly 2 billion streaming minutes in the first quarter, Nielsen said.
Followers of the NHL’s official TikTok account were up 83% this season, Nielsen reported. Further demonstrating America’s growing interest, the national TV debut of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) drew about 133,000 viewers to Ion, with 45% of the audience women 18-plus. In addition, demonstrating the buying power of hockey fans, NHL viewers rank No. 3 in median income among all sports watchers.
Last year’s Indianapolis 500 averaged more than 7 million viewers, the most in 17 years. The 2026 IndyCar season is already off to a strong start, with the first five races averaging 1.2 million viewers, 44% higher than the same period in 2025. Viewer interest is also rising, with 19% of respondents reporting being somewhat or very interested in IndyCar this March, up from 15% in March of 2023.
So far this year, the PGA Tour is averaging 1.5 million viewers. Efforts to evolve the franchise’s social media presence may be paying off, as Nielsen Scarborough data shows a steady increase in interest since 2023. *An influx of young Asian talent like Collin Morikawa, Akshay Bhatia, and Si Woo Kim looks to be helping to expand the tour’s audience, with Asian viewership to PGA Tour events up 12% so far this year.
