Forget about Blake Griffin, Ricky Rubio, or Stephen Curry. When David Stern approaches the podium tonight at the 2009 NBA Draft, there is one name that may get more attention than all of them combined: EA Sports. As the top sponsor for the draft, the video game manufacturer will have a major presence in a U.S. sporting event for the second week in a row, and Nielsen data reveals why the NBA Draft is an appealing option to place its marketing resources.
More than 2.8 million viewers watched last year as …

On average, NBA playoff viewership is up 18% across TNT, ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC thanks in part to a pair of Conference final games. On May 26th, the Cavs and Magic pulled 10.1 million viewers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Championship Series on TNT – the most ever for an NBA Playoff game on cable and the most-watched cable telecast of the year. And the Lakers-Nuggets’ Game 4 of the Western Conference Championship Series delivered 9.7 million viewers - the most ever for a basketball game (college or pro) in ESPN’s history.

Monitoring traffic to three major web properties – ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, and CBS Sports – during the recent NCAA Basketball Tournament shows a spike in activity over last year (Y-O-Y) and the boost in traffic compared to the previous month (M-O-M).

Unique Audience  And % Change

Site
Mar-08
Feb-09
Mar-09
M-O-M
Y-O-Y

CBS Sports
15,106,000
10,684,000
18,127,000
70%
20%

ESPN
19,844,000
17,181,000
22,938,000
34%
16%

Yahoo! Sports
19,432,000
24,953,000
25,515,000
2%
31%

Source: Nielsen Online

Additionally, video streaming on CBS Sports saw massive gains during the tournament, with nearly a 300% gain in unique users watching video. Those viewers racked up more than 380 million minutes of viewing time in March.

CBS …

Now that the NCAA Tournament has tipped off, senior vice president for Nielsen Sports Tom Ziangas talks about how important March Madness is to the CBS brand as well as the basketball tournament’s appeal to advertisers.
“The one thing you think about as far as the NCAA tournament is it’s synonymous with CBS,” said Ziangas. “I think advertisers understand that. That’s why you have people like Coke and AT&T – and even GM is actually coming back to the tournament when they pulled out of the Super Bowl. Having that cache …

The NCAA Tournament, March Madness, is one of the most celebrated sporting events in the U.S, providing a tremendous opportunity for advertisers to reach a wide and relatively affluent audience.
Nielsen’s Guide To March Madness, tracks a range of consumer and media information surrounding the event including advertising trends and demographic reach of the multi-week event. Ad buys for CBS’s coverage of the NCAA Tournament have risen steadily over the last five years – from $434 million in 2004 to $580 million in 2008 – a surge of almost 34 percent.  …

With the brackets set and first round matchups set to tip off on Thursday, Nielsen has released its first annual Guide To March Madness, which tracks a range of consumer and media information surrounding the event.
“The NCAA Tournament is very attractive to sports marketers even in tough economic times,” said Tom Ziangas, SVP for Nielsen Sports. “The games playing out over several weeks make it a sort of mini-series for viewers. There’s always some unexpected drama or Cinderalla story – like Davidson College last year – that makes March Madness a …

The NBA may not draw the highest ratings for nationally televised games, but it’s second only to the NFL in delivering their core fans to the TV sets, according to a new study from Nielsen PreView.
The study, which analyzed viewership data for some of America’s favorite sports, uncovered that while Major League Baseball and NBA pull in comparable audiences for nationally televised broadcast, when compared to the actual fan base in the United States, the NBA significantly outperformed most of its peers; NBA games were able to get 7.8% of …

NBA fans will have quite a few presents to unwrap on Christmas Day, with none bigger than the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers matchup on ABC. The teams square off for the first time since last year’s NBA Finals. When the Celtics defeated the Lakers for their 17th championship in June, the series received an average of 14.9 million viewers, the most for the NBA Finals in five years.
Since ABC obtained NBA broadcasting rights in 2002, the network’s Christmas Day games have averaged a 4.1 rating and 6.9 million viewers nationally. …

Less than a month into watching the NBA season, Nielsen has spotted some noticeable trends, including several teams outscoring last year’s ratings in their local markets. While the San Antonio Spurs are still the highest-rated NBA team with a 6.8 Average Household Rating in their market, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Portland Trailblazers are close behind, thanks to large increases in viewership compared to this time period last season.
NBA Local Ratings Box Score

The New Orleans Hornets ratings are up 163% compared to a year ago, thanks in large part …

When is the best time to engage with sport fans? 
It may depend on the time of the year, according to a multi-sport study from Nielsen PreView.  The research, which analyzed fan loyalty for more than a dozen sports found that while some fans are fully dedicated to one sport, many have competing loyalties that affect their engagement with each sport. 
For instance, while NCAA Basketball season begins in the fall – when baseball and football are also on the sports scene, February and March are the prime months when basketball fans are most …