If by any chance you’re one of the New Yorkers who switched off Wednesday night’s [NBA Finals](https://www.sportico.com/t/nba-finals/) game after the Knicks went down 29 to the Spurs, your neighbors probably let you know how things shook out in the Garden well before the nearest screen confirmed the outcome.
In what Knicks coach Mike Brown later characterized as “the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball,” OG Anunoby’s tip-in with 1.2 seconds left on the clock gave rise to what might best be described as a collective roar. From the Battery to the Bronx, we’re talking pneumatic-jackhammer decibels—and perhaps nobody was making more noise than Rita Ferro.
Like many of the top execs at ESPN/ABC, Disney’s global ad sales president is a long-suffering Knicks fanatic, and her team’s astonishing comeback has placed them within arm’s reach of their first title in 53 years. If there can be said to be a downside to New York going up 3-1 over San Antonio, it’s that Ferro’s team may miss out on an opportunity to make a bundle on a lengthy series.
In TV, the rule of thumb for a best-of-seven championship series is that the rights holder breaks even in Game 5, realizes a profit in Game 6 and breaks the bank in Game 7. Thus, no matter how things shake out at Frost Bank Center on Saturday night, Disney won’t come away from the NBA’s season-ending spectacle in the loss column.
With an average unit cost hovering around $800,000 for the first three broadcasts of this year’s Finals, Disney is already close to eclipsing last season’s seven-game ad haul, which EDO AdEngage estimates pegged at $288 million. Scatter pricing for Spurs-Knicks has pushed late buys over the $1 million mark, a dynamic fueled by a perfect storm of outsized ratings and all the bonus media considerations that are a function of a NYC-centric title tilt.
Such was not the case in 2025, when the Pacers and Thunder took their series to the limit. Repping significantly smaller media markets—Indianapolis and Oklahoma City’s combined reach yields 2.03 million in-market TV households, a far cry from Gotham’s standalone base (7.84 million)—last year’s contenders didn’t command a massive audience.
Case in point: Through the first three games of Indy-OKC, ABC’s Finals coverage averaged 8.96 million viewers. Per Nielsen, the broadcaster is currently averaging 19.05 million viewers per game, up 113% versus the analogous mark in 2025.
And while ABC’s initial TV turnout was already significant—the June 3 Knicks-Spurs opener averaged 16.93 million viewers, topping last season’s Game 7 by 328,000 impressions—the floodgates burst open on Monday night. Per Nielsen, ABC scared up 23.79 million viewers during Game 3, which now stands as the network’s sixth-biggest NBA audience since it began its stewardship of the Finals in 2003. The Spurs’ 115-111 road win also gave rise to the NBA’s largest in-game deliveries since the 2017 Warriors-Cavaliers clincher served up 24.47 million viewers.
Game 3 peaked at over 26 million viewers in the 11:15 p.m.-11:30 p.m. ET quarter-hour. While it’s anyone’s guess as to how many people took in the pulse-pounding finish to Game 4 (the official Nielsen data isn’t expected to be available until Friday afternoon), the presumed exodus of viewers at the half is likely to have taken the shine off ABC’s full-game average. San Antonio headed to the locker room with a seemingly irreversible 76-49 lead before the Knicks rallied to do their Team of Destiny thing.
Disney last week confirmed that it had sold out all of the available guaranteed units in the Finals, but that some slots remained in the hypothetical three-game end run. At last count, 42 advertisers had suited up for this year’s installment of the NBA Finals, with 24 first-timers activating across all Disney platforms.
The last available unit in Game 5 was snapped up earlier this week. Many of ABC’s advertisers have multiyear deals in place, which ensures that their rates don’t fluctuate nearly as much as would be the case for brands that aren’t as vested in the Finals.
If nothing else, the Spurs’ Game 3 win guarantees that ABC/ESPN will walk away with more than $300 million in ad sales—all of which it will pocket. Given the eye-popping ratings, not a single compensatory makegood unit has been put into service to placate advertisers, who frankly are getting a hell of a bargain. For marketers that secured units in the 2025-26 upfront, Monday night’s game worked out to an easy/breezy $34 CPM … although the scatter rates in the broadcasts tentatively scheduled for June 16 and June 19 would help nudge the cost-per-thousand figure a bit closer to the more typical nosebleed metrics.
ABC’s presentation of Game 5 of the NBA Finals tips off Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. ET.