This year’s NBA Finals ended on a high note, ratings-wise.
Sunday’s Game 7, which saw the Oklahoma City Thunder win the championship over the Indiana Pacers, drew an average of 16.35 million viewers on ABC, according to fast national figures from Nielsen, per The Hollywood Reporter. Viewership peaked at 19.28 million from 9:45-10 p.m. ET, in the closing moments of the Thunder’s win.
The average tally of 16.35 million viewers marks the biggest audience for an NBA Finals game in six years, with the final two games of the 2019 NBA Finals between the Toronto Raptors and Golden State Warriors both topping 18 million viewers.
Overall, though, this year’s NBA Finals — featuring two small-market teams in Oklahoma City and Indiana — lagged behind previous years in the ratings, with a seven-game average of 10.27 million viewers that only tops 2003 (Spurs-Nets) and 2007 (Spurs-Cavaliers) in the last 20-plus years. (That’s not counting the COVID years of 2020 and 2021, which aired outside the traditional June window and also pulled lower numbers than this year.)
But there is good news for ABC and ESPN, who just signed a new media rights deal with the NBA last year: This year’s NBA playoff games on the two networks were up 10 percent in the ratings versus last year, with an average of 6.12 million viewers.