Fandom Index Shows Radio’s Key Role In NBA Markets.

Just as Nielsen Scarborough has done for NFL and college football, with the start of the NBA season comes its just-released NBA Fandom Index, ranking the pro basketball markets with the most engaged fan bases, and showing the importance of radio listening along with other fandom metrics, including game attendance, TV viewership, streaming, social media activity, apparel purchases and overall interest level.

The results, Nielsen’s report says, show “a powerful narrative of heartland devotion dominating professional basketball enthusiasm, [showing] how regional identity intersects with modern sports media consumption. Radio continues to have the largest reach of any media platform in today’s ecosystem, and local market sports broadcasts play a big role in those usage patterns.”

Leading all franchises with the highest fandom index is Oklahoma City, home to the 2025 NBA Championship-winning Thunder, whose games are broadcast on Cumulus Media’s “The Sports Animal 98.1” WWLS. The franchise leads all markets in every category except for radio. “In mid-sized markets lacking competing major professional sports franchises, single-team concentration creates an unmatched cultural anchor, where franchise merchandise and game-day rituals serve as vital vehicles for civic pride and community expression,” Nielsen explains.

So which NBA market scores the highest index for radio listening? That honor goes to second-ranked Cleveland/Akron, where broadcast coverage of the Cavaliers on iHeartMedia’s WMMS (100.7) and WTAM (1100) puts it far ahead of all other markets with a 334 index, followed by fourth-ranked Indiana and the Pacers at 278. The Pacers flagship radio station is Urban One’s “93.5/107.5 The Fan” WFNI/W228CX/W298BB (1070/93.5/107.5). Both markets, as the report notes, “[show] high engagement through legacy broadcast channels.”

Additionally, Indianapolis has one of the most digitally-engaged fan bases in the NBA, with a social media index second only to Oklahoma City, and a streaming index that ranks third overall.

While mid-sized markets dominate Nielsen Scarborough’s NBA fandom top 10, two majors also make the cut, and do so with high-indexing radio listening. Fifth-ranked Boston, home to the Celtics, ranks third in both radio (WBZ-FM) and TV, while 10th-place San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose over-indexes for radio (KGMZ-FM), TV and social media coverage of the Golden State Warriors.

One other top 10-ranked market — Milwaukee, which ties for eighth — shows strength when it comes to traditional media, with the fifth-highest radio listening (WTMJ-AM) and second-highest broadcast and cable TV viewership, for the Bucks.

The other market tied for eighth — San Antonio, whose Spurs lost to the New York Knicks in this year’s NBA Finals — place third behind Oklahoma City and Indianapolis when it comes to social media, followed by third-ranked Memphis and sixth-place Sacramento.

According to Nielsen, the top 10 NBA fandom markets include the six ranking highest for streaming: Oklahoma City, Memphis, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Denver and the San Francisco Bay Area.

“Ultimately, the Nielsen Scarborough data demonstrates that market size alone does not dictate fandom intensity — findings that mirror what we have seen with NFL and college football fandom in recent months,” the report says. “Taken together, the findings point to the same conclusion: where a team is the clear center of local identity and has fewer competing entertainment options and split loyalties, fans engage more often and across more channels than their market size would predict.”

Specific to the NBA ranking, Nielsen adds, “In the NBA’s smaller and mid-sized markets, professional basketball serves as a primary cultural driver, yielding denser fan concentration, higher per-capita merchandise investment, and stronger social and streaming engagement than larger, media-saturated markets can replicate.”

It should be noted that the overall ranking represents all 27 U.S. DMAs with an NBA franchise, covering 29 of the league’s 30 teams, excluding Toronto and the Raptors as Scarborough USA+ does not cover Canada.