Despite a largely weak viewership performance from the NBA Finals, a seven-game series helped lift the league’s entire playoff ratings picture.
According to a report from Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, the full NBA playoffs averaged 4.74 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV (5.05 million viewers with NBA TV excluded), up 5% versus last year’s average. Prior to the NBA Finals, total playoff viewership was up just 2%, meaning the length of the series helped the NBA secure an even larger increase.
It’s a unique circumstance. This year’s NBA Finals were the least-watched since the COVID-impacted 2021 Finals, or the least-watched since 2007 when excluding that series, but actually helped the league’s overall playoff picture. That’s because, while this year’s series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers didn’t perform well by NBA Finals standards, those games still draw significantly more viewers than a typical playoff game, even compared to a conference final. And since there were seven NBA Finals games this year, compared to just five last year, the extra viewership added a few percentage points to the league’s year-over-year comparison.
Without the NBA Finals going the distance, and Game 7 earning 16.61 million viewers in the process, the league’s viewership picture would’ve looked notably worse. However, between the two additional Finals games and two more games during the conference finals round than last year, the NBA was able to secure a modest increase.
Series length has always been the primary determiner of viewership, and this year’s NBA Finals was perhaps the best example of that. Through six games, not a single telecast drew an audience of greater than 10 million viewers. But over 16 million tuned in for Game 7, making it the most-watched NBA game in six years.
Viewers like do-or-die. There’s a reason why the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament final regularly outdraws the average NBA Finals telecast: it’s one game. Casual viewers understand the significance of the words “Game 7.”
Fortunately for the NBA, “Game 7” kept them out of the viewership red this postseason.