The Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder are currently battling it out in what is the smallest-market NBA finals ever, and the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers are doing something similar in the NHL.
Because of these occasions (and the discussion around their ratings), Awful Announcing analyzed two decades of championship series viewership data across three professional leagues with the hopes of answering an age-old sports media question: How much do the market sizes of competing teams really matter?
As it turns out, they do matter… but not that much.
The NBA, MLB and NHL have all had several championship matchups featuring two teams hailing from major media markets within the past 20 years. And yet, only a handful of these series cracked the top 5 most-viewed for each league.
Instead, the presence of a compelling narrative or a major star — or both — proved to be much more reliable drivers of strong finals ratings, no matter the sport.
Below, we break down how this plays out for each of the three leagues in greater detail. If you would like to see the raw data featuring each championship matchup, the combined market size, and the viewership numbers you can view it in spreadsheet form here.
NBA: You can’t beat a Lebron James Finals
For nearly half a decade, the NBA Finals benefited from perhaps the most compelling narrative and the greatest star in all of professional sports, coming, of course, in the form of LeBron James’ mid-2010s quest to bring as many championships as possible to his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers.
And despite Cleveland’s small market status, people tuned in en masse.
Three of the four consecutive Cleveland-Golden State finals during this period — 2015, 2016 and 2017 — were the NBA’s most-watched of the last 20 years, averaging roughly 20 million viewers per game. Their last matchup in 2018 wasn’t too far behind, either.
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But in the grand scheme of the NBA’s recent history, these figures have turned out to be outliers, underscoring the power of, well, star power (and rivalry drama). Before and after James’ tear, the NBA finals averaged ~15 million and ~11 million viewers, respectively.
That said, four smaller market series (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014) firmly exceeded 15 million average viewers during our sample period. All of these also featured James, who was playing for the Miami Heat at the time — and providing a different kind of compelling narrative. Meanwhile, only two big market matchups (2004, 2010) — which we defined for all leagues as a series featuring two teams hailing from markets with a combined DMA rating under 20 — did the same.
And sure, ratings aren’t looking good for this year’s as-small-as-it-gets championship. And it’s just one more data point in the entire NBA conversation around league-wide viewership that has been a subject of debate all season. Coming off last year’s NBA Finals between the Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics also struggling at 11.3 million viewers (4th lowest since 2024 in spite of of being the 4th highest combined DMA rating), it lends more credence to the idea that the NBA needs to find its new face of the league moving forward.
MLB: Hungry for history
If the presence of Lebron James makes for a must-watch NBA Finals, then the possibility of ending an uber-long championship drought makes for a must-watch World Series.
The two most-viewed October classics among those we analyzed — by huge margins — came in 2004, when the Boston Red Sox snapped their 86-year curse, and 2016, when the Chicago Cubs did the same (albeit after enduring 108 years without a championship).
Historical significance does a lot for World Series viewership in other ways, too. For example, despite St. Louis being a decidedly mid-tier market, all four of the Cardinals’ World Series appearances in the last 20 years averaged more than 15 million viewers — a feat that’s almost assuredly thanks to their standing as one of baseball’s oldest and most successful organizations.
However, market size isn’t totally moot in Major League Baseball: Beyond 2004 and 2016, the next most-watched World Series (2009, 2017, 2005) all featured competing teams from markets with a DMA ranking of 6 or under. Two of these teams were the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, which, in addition to being top baseball programs, have also evolved into widely beloved brands. (I’m still waiting for the day Kendall Jenner rocks a Cleveland Guardians cap).
Also, there is the caveat that the longer a series goes, the higher the viewership average will be. For instance, last year’s Dodgers-Yankees World Series only going five games limited their total viewership potential. But it’s not a given for huge numbers. The 2019 World Series between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros averaged just 13.9 million viewers in spite of going to a Game 7.
NHL: N(o) Canada
A Canadian team hasn’t won an NHL title since 1993, and the country’s recent Stanley Cup viewership record isn’t much better: Three of five least-watched Stanley Cup finals over the last two decades have featured a team from up north.
In contrast, all of the five most-watched Stanley Cup finals have included appearances by at least one of the league’s most popular franchises: the Chicago Blackhawks, the Boston Bruins and the Pittsburgh Penguins. The 2013 championship between Chicago and Boston, two Original Six franchises, was the best-performing in recent history.
Chicago and Boston are among the country’s top ten media markets, but Pittsburgh is most definitely not (it ranks 27th).
The NHL has more variables than the NBA and MLB when it comes to their championship series viewership. Accounting for Canadian markets is an inexact science (see below) and the Stanley Cup Final now alternates between cable and broadcast television with TNT and ABC.
But the overall numbers suggests that brand recognition is just as important as market size when it comes to Stanley Cup finals viewership. And considering the NHL continues to trail behind the other three major men’s professional leagues on everything from ticket sales to total fandom, the league is surely hoping for a big brand resurgence in the coming years.
The bottom line
While networks would prefer major market championship matchups, they don’t always guarantee strong viewership. Market size does become more important, however, in the absence of compelling storylines or big names. The dream of any league, of course, is to have a championship series that features all three.
That said, a more philosophical question looms on the importance of television ratings in an increasingly fractured viewing landscape and digital revolution.
Finals moments, like all sports moments, are now clipped and circulated in incalculable numbers on social media, where they take on a life of their own — a life that often extends well beyond the day when a champion is crowned. Plus, with sports content now more popular online than ever and Gen Z athletes rising to prominence in nearly every major league, the next wave of sports media debates should probably focus on aura size instead of market size.
Some notes on methodology:
Average viewership figures for all referenced league championship series were pulled from Wikipedia (NBA, MLB, NHL) and rounded to the nearest tenth decimal. Market sizes were pulled from Nielsen’s 2024-2025 DMA rankings.
A combined DMA ranking of 20 or under was chosen as the cutoff for a “big market matchup.”
Because Nielsen DMA rankings aren’t readily available for Canada, comparable U.S. cities were chosen to represent a Canadian market when its team was involved in a championship series. Comps were chosen based on several factors (including population size and geography) and are as follows: Chicago for Toronto, Boston for Montreal, Seattle for Vancouver, Washington, DC for Ottawa and Austin for Edmonton.