America is voting with their remotes on this year’s NBA Finals. And so far, they’re opting out.
Monday’s Game 5 between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder averaged 9.54 million viewers on ABC, down 22% from last year’s Dallas Mavericks-Boston Celtics series-deciding game (12.22 million viewers).
Per Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, it was the least-watched NBA Finals Game 5 since the 2020 “bubble,” a common superlative for this year’s series. Excluding the “bubble” season, in which the Finals were played in October, Monday’s game was the least-watched Game 5 since the 2003 San Antonio Spurs-New Jersey Nets series (9.31 million viewers). No other Game 5 has fallen shy of 10 million viewers since Nielsen introduced its current audience measurement methodologies in 1988.
The Thunder’s win, which puts them one game away from a championship, was the most-watched of the sparsely viewed series so far.
Through five games, this year’s NBA Finals are averaging 9.18 million viewers on ABC, down 19% from last year’s NBA Finals, which ended in five games. This is also the first NBA Finals to have the added benefit of Nielsen’s expanded out-of-home viewing measurements, which means that, all things equal, this year’s historical comparisons could have looked even worse than they do.
Many saw a weak viewership Finals coming from a mile away, given the small-market nature of the two teams playing. But it’s less clear whether the magnitude of weakness was expected. Given the secular decline in linear television viewing, perhaps multi-decade lows shouldn’t be all that surprising. The fact that more sporting events don’t reach these milestones is a testament to the strength of live sports as a television draw.
For the NBA, there’s little to worry about. The league begins its new 11-year $76 billion media rights deals next season. By the time it has to worry about renewal, viewership measurements as we know them will likely look a whole lot different than the Nielsen numbers that are the industry standard today.
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.