After Game 2 delivered the NBA’s top audience since going on hiatus 16 months ago, Game 3 of the NBA Finals was less of a draw.
Sunday’s Suns-Bucks NBA Finals Game 3 averaged a 4.7 rating and 9.02 million viewers on ABC, up 52% in ratings and 51% in viewership from Lakers-Heat in the “bubble” last October, which aired opposite NFL Sunday Night Football and posted the smallest Finals audience ever (3.1, 5.99M), but down 40% and 32% respectively from Raptors-Warriors in June 2019 (7.8, 13.35M).
Milwaukee’s blowout win, which peaked with 11.1 million viewers from 9:45-10 PM ET, tops only last year as the least-watched Game 3 of the Finals on record. It ranks as the tenth-least watched Finals game overall, with Game 1 ranking eighth and Game 2 thirteenth.
It still delivered the second-largest NBA audience since the league went on hiatus in March of last year, behind only Game 2 (9.38M). It also comfortably outdrew the corresponding Game 3 of last year’s World Series, which aired on a Friday night (4.3, 8.16M).
Through three games, the NBA Finals is averaging nine million viewers flat — up a third from last year in the “bubble,” though in all likelihood the second-lowest average on record.
After a relatively modest 13% bump for Game 1, viewership for Games 2 and 3 each jumped more than 40 percent from last year. Keep in mind that is largely because Games 2 and 3 of last year’s Finals were particularly depressed — even by last year’s record-low standards — by a presidential hospitalization and NFL competition.
Game 3 averaged a series-high 27.2 rating in Milwaukee, the market’s highest for an NBA game since 2001. Phoenix turned in a series-low 23.1.
[Nielsen estimates from ESPN, Nielsen]
