For the first time in nearly a decade, the NBA Finals is going the distance.
Game 7 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers is set to tip-off Sunday night on ABC, and if history is any indicator, the game should see a sizable audience. Unfortunately for ABC and the NBA, history might not be the best indicator when it comes to this series in particular.
Viewership for Thursday’s Game 6 is not yet available, but through five games, this year’s NBA Finals are averaging just 9.18 million viewers on ABC. That’s down 19% versus last year’s Dallas Mavericks-Boston Celtics series which ended in five games. Outside of the COVID “bubble” playoffs, Game 5 was the least-watched since 2003. Not a single game this series has eclipsed the 10 million viewer threshold. Suffice it to say, ratings for this year’s Finals have been nothing to call home about.
But Game 7 can help remedy an otherwise forgettable series from a ratings perspective. The past three NBA Finals Game 7s produced massive audiences for the league. Cavs-Warriors in 2016, the last Finals series to go the distance, averaged 31.02 million viewers on ABC. That game also featured the league’s two biggest stars, LeBron James and Steph Curry, and completed an improbable 3-1 comeback for the Cavaliers.
In 2013, Spurs-Heat averaged 26.34 million viewers for Game 7. James also featured in that series, with his Miami Heat team fighting to win back-to-back titles against Tim Duncan and the San Antoni Spurs.
Three years prior, in 2010, Celtics-Lakers went the distance and averaged 28.20 million viewers for Game 7. The Kobe Bryant-led Los Angeles Lakers beat the “Big 3” Boston Celtics.
One must go all the way back to 2005 to find an NBA Finals Game 7 that averaged under 20 million viewers. That year, Pistons-Spurs attracted 19 million viewers for its Game 7. Of course, the mid-2000s Spurs teams historically rated very poorly from a viewership perspective.
This year’s series has more in common with 2005 than any of the last three NBA Finals series to go to a seventh game. None of the first four games in 2005 surpassed audiences of 11 million viewers. Then, the series saw a slight uptick to about 13 million viewers for Games 5 and 6 before reaching 19 million for Game 7. Similar to 2005, this year’s series features two teams without bona fide superstars, whereas the past three Game 7s have all featured either LeBron James or Kobe Bryant.
There are at least a couple of factors going for this year’s Game 7 audience, however. For one, it’ll be contested on a Sunday, historically one of the stronger nights for viewership in the United States. Prior to 2016, Game 7s were played on weeknights, with ’05, ’10, and ’13 all being played on Thursdays.
Then, of course, there are the changes Nielsen has made to its methodologies since 2016. Specifically, the addition of Nielsen’s out-of-home viewing measurements, which tracks viewership in places like bars and hotels, should offer some help from a historical perspective.
So far, however, even the boost in viewership from Nielsen’s methodological updates haven’t given Thunder-Pacers much help. And, anecdotally, the series just hasn’t felt too “buzzy” even with many of the games being very competitive and close in the fourth quarter.
For that reason, this Game 7 seems destined to be the least-watched since at least 2005, and perhaps even further back.
The official Awful Announcing prediction: 16.8 million viewers