This year’s NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs continues to deliver television audiences that are setting multiyear highs.
After Game 1 last Wednesday averaged 16.93 million viewers on ABC, the most-watched NBA Finals Game 1 since 2018, Friday’s Game 2 nearly matched the audience for the opening game of the series. 16.43 million viewers tuned in for the Knicks’ Game 2 victory on ABC last Friday, making it the most-watched Game 2 since 2018, when 17.67 million viewers watched the Golden State Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers. The audience for Game 2 increased by 88% versus last year’s lackluster tune-in (8.91 million viewers for Thunder-Pacers).
Per ESPN, viewership peaked at 19.42 million people in the 11:15 p.m. ET quarter-hour, falling just below Game 1’s peak of 19.63 million viewers.
Of course, it is important to caveat that this is the first NBA Finals to be measured using Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement standards, which tend to increase viewership for live sports versus historical comparisons. However, those increases tend to be in the low single-digit percentages, meaning the vast majority of the increased viewership this series is seeing can be attributed to genuine enthusiasm about the games.
In fact, each of the first two games this series rank as the most-watched NBA Finals games since 2019, even beating out last year’s Game 7 viewership (16.35 million viewers). One would need to go all the way back to Games 6 and 7 of the Raptors-Warriors series in 2019 to find larger NBA Finals audiences.
No doubt, the presence of the Knicks in the Finals for the first time since 1999 is helping drive viewership. Between the celebrity factor, the large New York media market, and the Knicks’ status as a marquee NBA brand, it was safe to assume this year’s Finals would be a viewership draw. The only question was, how much?
So far, we’re seeing viewership that hasn’t been attained since the days of the LeBron James-Steph Curry rivalry. That’s a great sign for both the NBA and ESPN/ABC.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.