In what’s shaping up to be a disruptive year for sports media, the NBA on Tuesday got out ahead of the field with a 2026 Finals schedule designed to sidestep a potentially massive World Cup match.
The league took the wraps off a new look for its best-of-seven championship series, shifting Game 1 from its usual Thursday night perch to Wednesday, June 3. Game 2 is now scheduled for Friday, June 5, a move that not only eliminates the three-night lag between the first two ABC broadcasts, but also wipes out the traditional Sunday G2 tipoff.
In fact, Sunday has been stricken from the slate altogether, with Game 7 (if necessary) now set to air on Friday, June 19. This marks the first time in 56 years that a Finals game won’t take place on a Sunday—the biggest night of the week for TV consumption. Then again, given the stakes involved, the projected Game 7 date isn’t likely to have much of an impact on ABC’s ratings. As much as HUT levels (industry jargon for Homes Using TV) are somewhat zombified on summer Fridays, a seventh game of a championship series is going to command a crowd no matter when it airs.
In rejiggering the Finals schedule, NBA brass has put Game 4 out of harm’s way of the U.S. national team’s 2026 World Cup opener against Paraguay, which is set to kick off on Friday, June 12, at 9 p.m. ET. No sense tempting fate; the last time the U.S. men’s team played a primetime group stage match (2014), a combined 24.7 million viewers took in the 2-2 draw with Portugal on ESPN and Univision.
While the revamped Finals slate sets up a possible G7 to air on the same day as the American team’s second World Cup appearance, that 3 p.m. ET clash with Australia on June 19 will have been decided well before ABC’s hypothetical broadcast would get underway later the same evening. If anything, Fox’s coverage of that group stage showdown would serve as a virtual lead-in for ABC’s hoops finale, especially where out-of-home deliveries are concerned. (If past traffic patterns in New York alone are any indication, the nation’s bars are going to be packed, and thanks to Nielsen’s currency upgrade, it’s expected that a record number of OOH impressions will be tallied throughout the FIFA tourney.)
For what it’s worth, the last time an NBA Finals skipped a Sunday was in 1970, when the Knicks beat the Lakers in seven to win their first title. While Game 7 will be forever remembered for Willis Reed’s surprise limp-on role in New York’s 113-99 victory, locals had to wait until 11:30 p.m. that same night for Channel 7 to air an encore, as the live ABC feed was blacked out in the home market. (The recently launched MSG Network did offer a live telecast for subscribers in its Manhattan footprint, but at the time fewer than 15,000 households had signed up for the service.)
A Lakers-Knicks G7 in 2026 would very likely shatter the NBA’s all-time record of 35.9 million viewers, which is what NBC served up care of Game 6 of the 1998 Bulls-Jazz Finals. At the risk of engaging in hyperbole, Adam Silver could schedule a New York-L.A. G7 for 3 a.m. ET on a Tuesday and ABC would still put up the biggest numbers in at least a quarter-century. Admittedly, the Knicks’ current 2-9 streak makes a mockery of such speculation, but then again the Lakers are no prize either.
Regardless of which teams suit up for this summer’s Finals, the NBA’s bid to avoid the World Cup spectacle is the smart play … even if it necessitates slotting Game 5 on a Saturday night, when TV usage is at its weekly nadir. Disregarding the out-of-joint 2021 Finals, which were bumped up to July by the pandemic, Saturday has been a third rail for the NBA for the better part of the last 45 years. Little wonder; approximately 20 million fewer Americans watch TV on an average Saturday night in June than they do on any given Sunday night during the same month.
But if Saturdays have long been the kiss of death for scripted TV—hence the night’s redlined status as a dumping ground for repeats—such considerations fly out the nearest window when a major sports title is on the line. Fox’s coverage of Game 7 of the 2025 World Series may have landed on a Saturday night in November, but 26.9 million fans somehow managed to override their Pavlovian conditioning in order to catch the Dodgers’ 5-4 victory over the Blue Jays.
For what it’s worth, Saturdays weren’t always a drag on TV deliveries. Fifty years ago, CBS led off its Saturday night comedy lineup with TV’s top-rated show (All in the Family), which in turn led into M*A*S*H (No. 4) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (No. 9). Per Nielsen, over 21 million households per week tuned in for Archie Bunker’s antics; today, the average Saturday primetime show is fortunate if it makes its way into as many as 700,000 TV homes.
As is always the case with a best-of-seven series, duration is everything. Fox’s Game 7 coverage more than doubled its turnout for the series opener (12.3 million viewers), a feat that was in keeping with the numbers ABC churned out a few months earlier. Game 1 of Pacers-Thunder averaged 8.91 million viewers, or nearly half of the G7 turnout (16.6 million).