With the Warriors on the brink and Kevin Durant briefly back in the lineup, NBA Finals ratings rebounded historically well in Game 5.
Monday’s Warriors-Raptors NBA Finals Game 5 earned a 10.6 rating and 18.22 million viewers on ABC, down 21% in ratings and 26% in viewership from 2017 (13.5, 24.53M) and down 10% and 11% respectively from 2016 (11.8, 20.53M), both of which were Cavaliers-Warriors matchups. There was no Game 5 last year.
Golden State’s narrow win ranks as easily the highest rated and most-watched game of the series. The previous highs were an 8.0 and 13.89 million for Game 2. Compared to Game 4 on Friday night — the lowest rated and least-watched Finals game since 2007 — ratings and viewership jumped 39 and 42 percent respectively.
Dating back to 1988, Game 5 is one of only ten Finals games to increase by at least a third over the previous game. Among the other nine are five Game 7s; Knicks-Rockets Game 6 in 1994 (following the largely-preempted Game 5); and Spurs-Nets Game 3 in 2003 (following the lowest rated primetime Finals game ever).
Ratings and viewership were still the lowest for a Game 5 in the NBA Finals since 2014 (Heat-Spurs: 10.3, 18.00M), but that represents a marked improvement for a series that had been hitting 10-and-12 year lows.
Overall, the game ranks seventh out of the last 13 Game 5s. It trails the three Cavaliers-Warriors games from 2015-17 as well as three straight from 2010-12 — Lakers-Celtics (10.8, 18.65M), Heat-Mavericks (10.8, 18.32M) and Thunder-Heat (10.9, 18.45M).
This year’s NBA Finals is the first to feature the Raptors, whose Canadian fanbase is not tracked by Nielsen. Game 5 had a record Canadian audience of 6.9 million across SportsNet, CityTV, RDS and a Canadian ABC feed, the nation’s largest TV audience of the year. If one were to combine the U.S. and Canadian audiences, Game 5 would have 25 million viewers, exceeding the U.S.-only audience for every other Game 5 since 1998.
In the U.S. alone, Game 5 had a 6.5 rating in adults 18-49 — down 28% from 2017 (9.0) and down 14% from 2016 (7.6). The 6.5 is the lowest for a Game 5 since 2013 (6.3). Even so, it is easily the highest of the series, rising 35% over the previous mark of 4.8 for Games 1 and 2.
Game 5 also had a 5.7 in adults 18-34, down 31% from 2017 (8.3), down 21% from 2016 (8.3) and the lowest for a Game 5 since 2009 (5.6). That is also a series-high, up 36% from the previous mark of 4.2. Ratings also hit a series-high in adults 25-54 (7.1).
The 10.6 rating for Game 5 marks a 21% drop from the 13.4 overnight. While that is an unusually steep drop for an NBA Finals game, it is also a slight improvement over the first four games (which each declined 22%).
[Rating from Anthony Crupi/Twitter 6.11, viewership/demos from Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 6.11; Canadian figures from NBA]
