The NBA conference finals continues to deliver multi-year viewership highs, both for the Thunder-Spurs main event and the Knicks-Cavaliers undercard.<\/p>\n
Through four games, the Thunder-Spurs NBA Western Conference Finals was averaging 9.62 million viewers across a Nielsen-measured linear audience on NBC (3.8 rating, 7.49M viewers) and streaming audience tracked by Adobe Analytics (2.13M), marking the highest four-game average for a conference final since Heat-Bulls on TNT in 2011 and the highest on record for a Western Conference Finals.<\/p>\n
Last Sunday\u2019s Game 4 averaged a combined 10.30 million across Nielsen (4.0 rating, 8.36M per Nielsen) and Adobe (1.94M), the highest for a conference final Game 4 since Heat-Celtics on ESPN in 2012 (11.07M) and highest for a WCF Game 4 since Spurs-Trail Blazers in \u201999 (10.70M).<\/p>\n
Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with \u201cBig Data\u201d from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will generally skew historical comparisons, particularly to years prior to 2020.<\/p>\n
Game 3, as previously noted<\/a>, had a combined audience of 9.03 million Friday night (3.6, 7.03M per Nielsen; 2.00M per Adobe), the highest for a conference final Game 3 since Bulls-Heat on TNT in \u201911, and the highest for a WCF Game 3 since Kings-Lakers on NBC in 2002.<\/p>\n Compared to last year\u2019s equivalent Thunder-Timberwolves WCF on ESPN\/ABC, viewership for Games 3 and 4 increased 72% and 58% respectively from 5.26 and 6.53 million. (NBC\u2019s position is that because Nielsen does not track its streaming viewership, its combined Nielsen + Adobe audience figures are comparable to the Nielsen-only figures of other networks.)<\/p>\n As for the other conference final series, the four-game Knicks-Cavaliers Eastern Conference Finals averaged 7.4 million on ESPN\/ABC \u2014 officially marking the most-watched East Finals since the seven-game Heat-Celtics on TNT in 2023. Viewership increased 6% from last year\u2019s six-game Pacers-Knicks series on TNT Sports (7.0M), within the margin that can be explained by Nielsen methodological changes.<\/p>\n The Knicks\u2019 easy sweep was also the most-watched conference final on the ESPN networks since that same 2023 postseason, a more competitive four-game sweep between the Nuggets and Lakers.<\/p>\n The top game of the series was Saturday\u2019s Game 3 on ABC, which averaged a 3.7 rating and 8.11 million viewers \u2014 the highest for a Game 3 of the East Finals since the previously-noted Bulls-Heat in 2011. Ratings increased 16% and viewership 14% from Knicks-Pacers last year (3.2, 7.09M).<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s clinching Game 4 averaged 7.2 million viewers on ESPN, up 7% from Knicks-Pacers last year (6.71M). As previously noted, Games 1<\/a> and 2<\/a> each averaged 7.1 million on ESPN. (More specifically, Game 1 had a 3.6 rating and 7.12 million and Game 2 a 3.5 and 7.13 million.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA conference finals continues to deliver multi-year viewership highs, both for the Thunder-Spurs main event and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,2520,2525,6,2528,1007,697,2530,11,353,68053,2535],"class_list":["post-800197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-playoffs","tag-basketball","tag-cavaliers-tv-ratings","tag-knicks-tv-ratings","tag-nba","tag-nba-on-abc","tag-nba-on-espn","tag-nba-on-nbc","tag-nba-playoff-ratings","tag-nba-playoffs","tag-nba-ratings","tag-spurs-tv-ratings","tag-thunder-tv-ratings"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117013492767318067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800197","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=800197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}