The Pacers-Knicks Eastern Conference Finals ended with a series \u2014 and season \u2014 high, if short of the previous conference final Game 6.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s Knicks-Pacers NBA Eastern Conference Finals Game 6 averaged 8.12 million viewers across TNT and truTV, down 7% from the previous conference final Game 6 \u2014 Celtics-Heat two years ago (8.71M) \u2014 but the most-watched game of the NBA season. The previous high was 7.91 million for Lakers-Warriors on Christmas, and the previous playoff high was 7.35 million for Lakers-Timberwolves in the first round.<\/p>\n
The Pacers\u2019 series-clinching win, which peaked with 9.91 million in the 10:15 PM ET quarter-hour, trails only Celtics-Heat two years ago as the most watched conference final Game 6 since 2018. Regardless of game, it ranks sixth over that span \u2014 behind Heat-Celtics Games 6 and 7 and Nuggets-Lakers Games 3 and 4 in 2023 and Celtics-Heat Game 7 in 2022 (9.88M).<\/p>\n
The full, six-game Pacers-Knicks series averaged 6.96 million viewers \u2014 up 10% from the four-game Celtics-Pacers on ESPN\/ABC last year (6.31M). Compared to last year\u2019s TNT conference final, the five-game Mavericks-Timberwolves in the West, viewership increased 3% from 6.74 million.<\/p>\n
Pacers-Knicks ranks as the most-watched ECF since 2014 that did not go seven games (seven series). The three series over that span to go seven \u2014 Cavaliers-Celtics in 2018, Celtics-Heat in 2022 and Heat-Celtics in 2023 \u2014 averaged 8.57, 6.98 and 7.42 million respectively.<\/p>\n
Viewership outpaced the five-game Thunder-Timberwolves Western Conference Finals (5.59M) by 25%, the largest gap between conference finals since 2019, when the West outpaced the East series (which included Toronto, a Canadian market that does not count toward U.S. television ratings) by 34%.<\/p>\n
Entering the NBA Finals, NBA playoff games have averaged 4.20 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, ESPNU, TNT and NBA TV \u2014 up 3% from last year (4.10M). With NBA TV and ESPNU excluded, the average of 4.5 million is still up 3% year-over-year.<\/p>\n
Playoff games have averaged a 10.6 share \u2014 meaning that 10.6% of TV homes using television are watching in the average minute \u2014 the highest for the playoffs on record. (As linear television usage declines, live sports will tend to make up a greater and greater share of the audience.)<\/p>\n
As usual, the NBA Playoffs has largely dominated the rest of television in the key young adult demographics. ABC, ESPN and TNT have won the night on television among adults 18-49 for 37 of 39 nights this postseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pacers-Knicks Eastern Conference Finals ended with a series \u2014 and season \u2014 high, if short of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3768],"tags":[7,304,2525,6,1278,2530,353,1136,191,3810,3806,2532],"class_list":{"0":"post-74283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-knicks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-knicks","10":"tag-knicks-tv-ratings","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nba-on-tnt","13":"tag-nba-playoff-ratings","14":"tag-nba-ratings","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-knicks","17":"tag-newyork","18":"tag-newyorkknicks","19":"tag-pacers-tv-ratings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114620423679683613","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}