The NBA Finals hit a second-straight series-high in Game 4 Friday night, but yet again was the least-watched on record outside of the 2020 “bubble.”
Friday’s Thunder-Pacers NBA Finals Game 4 averaged a series-high 9.41 million viewers on ABC, down just 2% from Celtics-Mavericks last year, with the caveat that last year’s game was a 38-point rout by a Dallas team that entered the night down 0-3 (9.62M). This year’s game was a tightly-contested thriller decided in the final minutes.
Oklahoma City’s series-tying win, which peaked with 12 million in the 11 PM ET quarter-hour, was the least-watched Game 4 of an NBA Finals since Lakers-Heat in the fall 2020 “bubble,” which averaged 7.70 million on the first Tuesday of October. Excluding that anomalous circumstance, it was the least-watched in the Nielsen people meter era (1988-present).
Outside of the two COVID years of 2020 and 2021, Game 4 of the Finals has fallen on a Friday dating back to 2016. This year marks only the second time in that stretch that it has been the most-watched game of the series to that point, joining 2022.
The NBA Finals is now averaging 9.08 million viewers through four games, making it the least-watched at this point of the series since Lakers-Heat in the “bubble” (7.06M) and the least-watched outside of 2020 in the people meter era.
Dating back to last year, five of the past six Finals games have averaged fewer than ten million viewers, the lone exception being the Celtics’ clinching Game 5 win over the Mavericks last year (12.23M). This year’s series joins Lakers-Heat in the “bubble,” Spurs-Cavaliers in 2007 and Spurs-Nets in 2003 as the only Finals of the people meter era in which at least four games fell below the ten million mark.
With the series now tied 2-2, there is a better chance than usual that the NBA Finals will go the full seven games. It will need to in order to have any chance of approaching last year’s five-game average of 11.3 million.