Despite garish playing floors and a quirky format that's pretty difficult to understand, the NBA's new In-Season Tournament seems to have achieved its core objective -- that is, increase fan interest in the early portion of the league's marathon 82-game regular season.
ESPN said it averaged 1.522 million viewers for eight "group play" round games conducted on Friday nights this month, which is about a 20% uptick over the 1.269 million viewers the network drew on average for five comparable non-tourney games on Friday nights in November 2022.
