{"id":758228,"date":"2026-06-11T09:36:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/758228\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T09:36:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:36:41","slug":"nba-finals-tv-ratings-biggest-game-3-audience-since-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/758228\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Finals TV Ratings: Biggest Game 3 Audience Since 1998"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMonday\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/nba\/\" id=\"auto-tag_nba_1\" data-tag=\"nba\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBA<\/a> Finals telecast drew the largest TV audience for a finals game three in almost 30 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/abc\/\" id=\"auto-tag_abc_1\" data-tag=\"abc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ABC<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/espn\/\" id=\"auto-tag_espn_1\" data-tag=\"espn\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN<\/a>\u2018s broadcast of the San Antonio Spurs\u2019 115-111 victory over the New York Knicks averaged 23.79 million viewers, including 1.1 million for an alternate telecast on ESPN. The last time the third game of the series had more viewers was back in 1998, when Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls put their infamous 96-54 beatdown of the Utah Jazz en route to a second three-peat as NBA champions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMonday\u2019s game peaked with 26.3 million viewers at 11:15 p.m. ET, the closing minutes of the contest. In ABC\u2019s 24-year history of broadcasting the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/nba-finals\/\" id=\"auto-tag_nba-finals_1\" data-tag=\"nba-finals\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBA Finals<\/a>, the previous high for a game three was 20.05 million viewers in 2017 (Golden State-Cleveland).<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThrough three games \u2014 the series will go at least five after San Antonio\u2019s win Monday \u2014\u00a0the NBA Finals are averaging about 19.1 million viewers. That\u2019s second only to the 2017 finals, which averaged 19.48 million over their first three games.   <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThis year\u2019s finals are currently bringing in more than double the amount of viewers than the 2025 series, which featured the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers, teams from two of the NBA\u2019s smaller media markets. San Antonio is a relatively small market as well, but the Spurs have both a championship history (five titles since 1999) and one of the game\u2019s biggest stars in Victor Wembanyama. New York, of course, is the biggest TV market in the U.S. by a pretty wide margin and is trying to end a 53-year title drought.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tGame four of the series is Wednesday night in New York, with game five scheduled for Saturday in San Antonio. If necessary, games six and seven would happen June 16 and 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday\u2019s NBA Finals telecast drew the largest TV audience for a finals game three in almost 30 years.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3785],"tags":[611,7,130,423,6,1220,9695,422,427,3972],"class_list":["post-758228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-utah-jazz","tag-abc","tag-basketball","tag-espn","tag-jazz","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals","tag-tv-ratings","tag-utah","tag-utah-jazz","tag-utahjazz"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116730801943744835","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758228","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=758228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}