The NBA is a global league.
That is a statement that basketball fans have heard countless times, especially since Adam Silver took over as the league’s commissioner in 2014, but we have perhaps never seen an announcement by the NBA that better represents that statement than the one the league made on Tuesday.
The league shared the news that the 2026-27 NBA regular season will get underway on Tuesday, Oct. 20, with the Detroit Pistons playing host to the Boston Celtics. Two historic Eastern Conference foes tipping off a new season, with the presumption of a marquee matchup to follow the same evening, would be a standard move for the league.
That is the case here with the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks and the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs following the opener on Tuesday, but there is one very important detail to note: the Celtics-Pistons game will tip off at 3 p.m. ET.
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Celebrating the start of a new NBA season on a Tuesday afternoon when the majority of the league’s North American fanbase will be working seems like a bizarre decision. One, and perhaps the only explanation here, is that the league’s season-opening decision doesn’t actually have fans in North America at the top of mind.
The NBA appeasing its fans across Europe would make sense following the viewership explosion from fans across the pond a season ago.
The 2025-26 NBA season marked the first of the league’s 11-year media deal with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon Prime, with Prime confirming that its coverage of the league outside of the U.S. was up 28% year-over-year.
According to SVG Europe, viewership of NBA games on Prime across Europe was up 129% year-over-year versus the previous season. The NBA Finals saw an uptick of 130% compared to the previous season across Europe.
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While the Celtics-Pistons season opener will be broadcast on NBC/Peacock, and the viewership uptick previously mentioned reflects Prime, it’s safe to assume European fans will manage to find the broadcast on NBC and put up large viewership numbers.
The Celtics-Pistons contest will tip off at 9 PM local time in London.
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As part of the 11-year partnership, NBCU distributes games in several European markets through Sky Sports, which is widely available across cable in many European countries.
The NBA is also set to host regular season games in Paris, France, along with Manchester, England, in January 2027.
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