Saturday night featured a busier-than-normal slate of sports telecasts on broadcast TV, including the NBA (ABC), Premier Boxing Champions (Fox) and NHL All-Star Game (NBC). The NBA was the clear top sports program for the night, as Warriors-Celtics drew 4.3 million viewers. But that figure was down 8% from the same matchup in the same slot last year. Among all broadcasts on Saturday night, the NBA was No. 2, behind only CBS' "48 Hours." which drew 4.8 million viewers. Coming in at No. 2 among sports on Saturday night was the PBC on Fox. There were three fights on the telecast, headlined by Keith Thurman's win over Josesito Lopez. The 1.98 million viewers was the best for a PBC card on Fox in two years. The PBC also beat out the NHL All-Star Game on NBC, which moved to primetime for the first time in many years. The game from San Jose drew 1.8 million viewers, which was down 12% from just over 2 million viewers last year, and down from 2.3 million viewers in ’17. The game aired on cable from ’07-16, and was dark in ’05, ’06, ’10, ’13 and ’14 due to either a lockout or Winter Games. On cable TV on Saturday night, ESPN's Syracuse-Virginia Tech matchup was the top sports telecast with 1.1 million viewers. Next on cable sports was Paramount Network, which drew 697,000 viewers for a Bellator MMA card.
